Authors: Angella Graff
Mark had found them years before, the milky-white contacts that movie producers used to feign blindness in their actors. They effectively made Mark blind, and at first the discomfort was almost too much to bear, but now when he took them out, his eyes felt small and naked, and the world was too bright.
He was washing them when the knock on his door came, and he called out, “Just a moment,” in his accented English. Mark was just getting used to the English language again. He'd spent longer than he cared to remember in the deep recesses of freezing cold Russia, and it had taken him quite some time to remember the guttural, Germanic tongue of the modern Western world.
With haste, Mark shoved the contacts back into his eyes, sending his vision into a pale white blur. He'd spent so long in this state he had learned to live blind, and had no trouble finding the door, and opening it.
“You busy?” It was the rather light, pretty voice of Abby. Mark had only glimpsed her without the contacts a few times, and found her pleasing to look at. She was short, her hair a honey color, and long. She was in her mid-twenties, and a very passionate teacher encumbered by a desperate obsession with religious supernatural events.
“No, please come in,” Mark said, standing aside. He smelled a rush of the herb garden as Abby breezed past him and walked into his small sitting room.
Mark followed the girl and took a seat in his customary chair, folding his hands over his crooked knee. Abby, on the sofa, was shuffling around the newspaper she’d brought in with her.
“Okay so,” she said in a rush, the deep roots of the United States’ west coast imbedded deeply in her accent, “this morning I went out and picked up the paper, which you know, I never do, and on the front page was an article about a guy in a church yesterday who was taken to a hospital because of stigmata wounds!” Her voice rose at the end with excitement and thrill. “We haven't had a case in the US with stigmata or anything like that in... well... a long time, right?”
Mark shrugged. “There are reports, from time to time. I hear them, rumors and such. I haven’t been here long, so I'm not entirely sure.” Mark’s voice was sharper than he had intended, mainly due to lack of sleep the night before.
There was an uncomfortable silence and then Abby said, “You seem a little distracted, I must have interrupted something. Would you like me to go?”
Mark smiled and shook his head. “No, no, please, tell me more about this article.” The truth was, he did want her to go. He was tired, he was feeling old and worn out and it seemed that no matter where he was, as quiet as he attempted to be, people were drawn to him. Abby, however, was a sweet girl, young and good, and it wasn't often Mark met people who were simply good.
She spoke again, her voice colored with excitement, and she shook the newspaper article as she told the story. “Well it says here that a homeless man wandered into Grace Chapel. The man was staring up at the crucifix and when one of the younger parishioners tried to help him, he threw the guy twenty feet across the room and then started bleeding from his hands! By the time the paramedics got to him, his hands had stopped bleeding and he was unconscious. There's no way that's coincidence.”
“It definitely sounds like something for your collection,” Mark said. Abby had a large collection of newspaper articles from all over the world categorizing religious miracles and incidents. Mark was never completely sure Abby was a true believer in the Judeo-Christian faith, but something about stigmata and weeping saints fascinated her, and for some reason, so did Mark.
Abby folded the paper and put it into the pocket of her ankle-length skirt. She checked her watch and grimaced. “Sorry, I gotta go. I have that late afternoon tutoring session, and then I'm meeting my brother for dinner.” She paused and then added hesitantly, “You um... you wanna come to dinner with us?”
Mark smiled and shook his head slowly, “Ah thank you for inviting me, but I believe I'll stay here this evening.”
Abby rose and put her hand down on Mark's shoulder. “You never come out with me. Someday I'll get you out into the light of day... or even the dark of evening.”
“Perhaps,” Mark said and gave her hand a friendly pat. He showed her to the door and when her small footsteps had faded, he locked the bolt, pulled the contacts from his eyes and gave a sigh. He really was tired; living over two-thousand years was exhausting in itself, even without the constant need to hide, and the constant worry that someone would figure his secret out.
Watching people born, grow up and die, all the while living, and sometimes just existing, in the world but not of it, hurt Mark. It was terrifying some nights, as he lay there in the dark, watching the world grow up around him as he spent an eternity trapped in his thirty year old body.
He hadn't changed; no matter how many years he avoided looking in a mirror. He was still tall, slender, with a tan face, smooth now that beards had gone out of fashion. His hair clipped short these days, curly as it had ever been, but sitting neatly just above his ears.
Mark supposed it was good his look was rather timeless, he could slip in and out of centuries with only a change of fashion and slang as he mastered each and every language of each and every land. He truly was ageless, the curse had seen to that, the curse he still didn’t understand.
Beyond his exhaustion, however, was thrill, thrill because for the first time in months, something had come up. Another incident of stigmata, something Mark knew didn’t happen often, and when it was real, it was usually his missing companion.
Mark raced to his laptop and typed in the information Abby had given him. Sure enough, an article popped up displayed by the local news of an enraged homeless man who seemed to have been stricken by a religious miracle.
Mark scanned the article and saw that the unnamed man had stopped bleeding by the time paramedics had arrived, and a detective on scene had been able to calm the man who was babbling in a strange language no one understood.
“Aramaic, probably,” Mark muttered to himself as he clicked through. He read on that the man had gone unconscious and the last report the news station had was the man was being treated at a local hospital for possible drug overdose or brain injury.
As no dates were given, and no names of detectives, Mark’s trail went cold there, but at least it was something. It had to be him, his Yehuda. His companion lost for so long Mark had trouble recalling the last time they’d spoken. Too much time had passed, Mark knew, too much time to be considered safe, for Yehuda to still be in his right mind.
Mark shut his laptop and began to formulate a plan. The first thing he needed to do was find out where the man had been taken, and the moment he could, he would take Yehuda away and they would both disappear.
Chapter Five
Ben hadn’t slept for ten hours straight since he was a high school student. He’d always been an early riser, brain full of things that needed to get done, and once he became a detective, Ben rarely slept at all.
Rolling over, Ben was surprised to see the sun shining directly through his window, and when he grabbed his phone to check the time, he sat up in shock. It was well past nine, and there were four missed calls from his office with a voicemail wondering where he was and if he was okay.
Nauseated, Ben jumped out of bed, raced to get dressed. He showered, shaved and gulped down coffee in less than ten minutes. He didn’t stop until he grabbed his glasses, and when his vision went cloudy after putting them on, he froze.
He blinked a little, and rubbed the lenses on his shirt, making sure they looked clear in the sun, and then shoved them back on his face. It was still the same, the world fuzzy and somewhat off center, and he felt dizzy when he tried to walk with them on.
Ben felt panic bubble up through his stomach when he remembered the doctor asking if he had any change in vision. Pulling out his phone, he dialed his doctor’s number with trembling fingers and waited. He expected voicemail, but the doctor picked up.
“Doctor Burke,” came the gruff voice.
“Dr. Burke, it’s Ben Stanford,” Ben said, trying to keep his voice calm and controlled. “I’m experiencing something… off.”
“How so?” the doctor asked matter-of-factly.
“You know, even with the meds you gave me, I still wasn’t sleeping. Only last night, I passed out around seven and only woke up about ten minutes ago. I’m not having any dizzy spells or headaches, but there’s something wrong with my eyes.”
“Are you losing vision? Seeing any large black spots?” he asked.
“No,” Ben said slowly. “It’s pretty strange. When I put my glasses on, I can’t see anything, but off, my vision looks… I don’t know… normal, I suppose. Like it used to be when I was a kid, before my astigmatism developed.”
There was a long pause before the doctor answered. “That is cause for concern, any vision changes are. Are you free to come in for a second MRI? I realize your job is a busy one, but I want to make sure we don’t need to move on this more quickly.”
Ben shoved down the panic threatening to consume him and he cleared his throat. “I’m free. When do you want me in?”
“Now,” the doctor said immediately. “I’m going to clear a space for you. Try and get here in the next twenty minutes.”
“Alright,” Ben said and hung up. He sent another quick message to his boss,
Sorry on a personal emergency, will call as soon as I can
. He turned his phone on to silent, went down stairs with his glasses in his pocket and got into his car.
“Okay,” Ben said to himself as he started up the engine. “I’m okay.” He mentally checked to make sure he was feeling fine, no dizzy spells, no warning signs of a seizure, and though his body wanted to drop down into a full blown panic attack, Ben forced himself to stay calm and drive.
The doctor’s office was busy, but when Ben gave his name, they called him back immediately. The nurse hooked him up to an IV this time, telling him something about a dye being injected into his body to get a better reading.
Feeling exposed in his gown, Ben lay down on the table and counted to twenty as the nurse started the medication. It was a strange feeling, like heat rushing through his body. When it passed through his middle, he panicked, thinking he was going to lose control of his bladder, but a few moments later, it passed and he was fine.
The MRI took an hour, and even though he’d slept for longer than he had in years, Ben still dozed off, and woke startled when a loud voice through a speaker told him it was over. Groggily, Ben sat up and allowed the nurse to remove the needle from his arm.
“Doctor Burke asked for the results to be sent straight to his office, and he’ll be in touch the moment he learns something,” she said in her nasal voice.
Mutely, Ben nodded and waited on the bed until the room was empty so he could change. He wasn’t sure what was going on, or why this was happening, but he knew that if he didn’t get some straight answers soon, he was going to go mad.
~*~
“Surgery,” the doctor said later that evening when he called Ben. “I found something very odd on this MRI image and I need to schedule you for an exploratory surgery sooner than originally planned. I’ll be performing it with one of the state’s top neurologists, and the procedure should take about two hours. You’ll need to clear your schedule for a few weeks, mind you, to ensure proper recovery.” Simple, to the point, and absolutely no information to ease Ben’s fear. He wrote down the date on a small pad sitting on his low coffee table, and mumbled as polite a goodbye as he could muster right then.
He stood there in the middle of the living room floor when the line from the doctor’s office had gone dead. He wasn’t sure what to think or how to move forward, and his feet felt oddly rooted to the ground, like he’d been cemented there.
Worse. It could be worse than before. Maybe better, a small voice inside Ben’s head piped up, but he ignored it, too afraid to let himself have hope.