Mary and Sam then walked toward Jeremy. He whispered, “Alright, the guards are right behind that door, we have to figure out how we can get them off the roof.” As Jeremy finished his sentence, he noticed a rivulet of sweat on Sam’s head flowing down her face and dripping off. Jeremy observed it and tried grabbing the drop, but it soared downward, plummeting toward the pews below and fell upon a guard’s face. Mary, Sam and Jeremy watched in fright and stillness, seeing the guard look up, pointing his eyes toward them, while yelling out in his language something that none of them could understand.
“What’s he saying?” Mary asked in a frantic tone.
“I don’t know, but it mustn’t be good,” replied Jeremy. He then opened the small door again and saw the guards running away. “Good, they’re leaving the roof and coming after us,” Jeremy said in excitement as the girls looked at him like he was crazy.
“What do you mean ‘good’? Now they’re gonna kill us,” Sam mentioned in an angry fashion while Jeremy crawled through the doorway.
“No, that’s not what I mean. Now we have a chance to get on this roof without them being here.” Mary and Sam crawled through the doorway also and Jeremy added, “Come on!” Jeremy turned around and saw the ledge through the roof door, seeing the troops running toward the ledge and looking down in fear. Jeremy knew they didn’t have enough time to just stand around and think, so they ran deeper onto the roof and stopped at the edge of it, looking down and seeing the staircase of the cathedral. Jeremy tried desperately to think of a plan, while they heard the troops’ voices getting louder, knowing they were becoming closer than before. Suddenly, without any more time to waste, the cloth around Jeremy’s neck started to shine and the girls screamed. Jeremy dropped the cloth in an instant and it shined even more.
“Let it take you to safety,” a voice said from the cloth.
The light ended, and they stood and looked at it and each other, wondering what the cloth meant. At that instant, the guards reached the small doorway to the roof and looked through it. They saw Jeremy, Sam and Mary standing by the edge of the roof looking at something. The guards saw each of their sweaty silhouettes, smelling their fear, understanding that they were trapped between the edge of the roof, the scorching sun, and themselves, holding guns toward their nervous backs.
“Shit, what do we do now?” Sam shouted, tilting her head in confusion at Jeremy, seeing him standing on the cloth.
“I know this sounds crazy, but get on it,” Jeremy demanded. Sam and Mary followed his orders and jumped on the cloth as well, knowing it was crazy, yet grasping there was no time to judge.
Mary questioned, “What do we do now?” The cloth began glowing again and at the same time, the troops came through the doorway and commenced shooting toward them, but some invisible shield that came from the cloth surrounded them and allowed the shots to ricochet and hit the troops instead. All the shots fired bounced back, killing each and every troop that stood on the roof: instant death from ricochet of their bullets. As soon as all twenty or more guards were killed, Mary’s tear-filled eyes, from seeing this violence, asked, “What now?” Her mind was warped from the blood, the brutality her mentality swallowed, and all she desired to see was the ground below.
Abruptly, the sun began to turn in the skies, fading to black, turning the day to night. The light from the cloth glowed brighter: it was as if the sun’s light went directly into the cloth, giving it life, giving it energy, birthing it with powers unknown. “My feet are burning,” Mary yelled. The cloth shot out fire from its body, lifting from the roof of the cathedral and allowing Jeremy, Mary and Sam to lift with it. It floated all the way to the ground and the light ended and their feet stopped burning. As soon as they reached the ground, they started running away and Mary yelled out, “Wait a second, what about David, Gabriel, and Michael?” The girls grabbed onto the cross together, and Mary asked the cross, “God—whoever you are—could you please guide us to David, Gabriel and Michael?”
The cross’s luminosity burned through the darkness, and their eyes followed it, noticing the sun beginning to show again. But the sun only shined to one area, and that area was the jail across the street from the cathedral. Once they noticed the lit jail, the sun showed its full light and glistened over the village once again.
“I guess they’re in that building,” said Sam before they ran over to it and entered in a place that they didn’t know was a jail.
Swiftly, Jeremy realized he left the holy cloth on the ground outside, saying, “I’ll be right back.” He ran outside, as Mary and Sam ran deeper into the jail, and he found the cloth. Jeremy grabbed it and when he turned around to face the jail again, the cloth began to shine.
“You shall not be harmed. Be brave, and you shall not see death,” the voice said from the light. Jeremy ran to the jail again, noticing the girls were nowhere to be found. Two guards came out from behind a corner and clutched Jeremy by his worn-out wrists. He made an endeavor to fight them to get free, but because of his hunger and thirst, Jeremy was too frail for battle. They pitched him in a jail cell where the girls were nervously sitting, crying out to each other in trepidation and terror. Their teary eyes saw Jeremy entering the cell, and when Sam saw him, she immediately ran up to Jeremy and embraced him ever so tightly. Of course Mary was going to do the same, but not so much like Sam did, and Jeremy noticed it, too.
“I thought they killed you,” Sam said, drying her tears with Jeremy’s shirt.
“Are you alright, Jeremy?” asked Mary, also hugging him while Sam still embraced him.
“Yeah. But what I need you two girls to do is grab the cross again. After we somehow get out of here, we have to know which direction to run in.” Jeremy dried the sweat from his face with the holy cloth that was around his neck, and watched the guards, seeing them talking to each other.
“The guards took it away, Jeremy, they put it on that table,” Sam explained, pointing toward a table that was directly in front of their cell.
“Where’s Gabriel, David and Michael?”
“We’re right next to you,” Michael yelled out. Jeremy turned to his right and saw only a wall in his view. “I’m behind the wall,” Michael said sarcastically, knowing Jeremy wouldn’t catch on to his whereabouts.
“Do you know how we could get out of here?” asked Jeremy.
“Nope, but I’m kind of beginning to like it here. They already fed us water and chicken,” Michael replied. Jeremy then saw light in the middle of the room, thinking of the word “chicken” rotating around his mind like a marble falling down a circular slide.
“I heard that before,” Jeremy said out loud. Silence took over the room, darkness came to Jeremy’s eyes, and the dirty ground below started to move about, its particles frolicking around in a circular motion. Suddenly, Jeremy fell to the ground, beginning another flashback that he wasn’t ready for.
In this realm of Jeremy’s mind, he found himself in clouds, seeing six angel children in his view. He walked slowly toward them, noticing they were holding hands and singing a song while their wings flew around with them as they ran around in a circle.
“Ashes, ashes, we all fall—” the children sang, holding laughter, falling to the ground in a swarm of giggles.
“I’m sick of playing this game, we play it every day,” one child said, getting up from the ground; Jeremy was trying to make out their images.
“Hey, I know, how about we see if Lucifer is still up to the task that he’s been telling us every day for a while he will take on?” another child said. He pushed Lucifer into the middle of the circle, adding, “How about it, Gabriel, do you think Lucifer could do it?”
“I don’t know, David, I think he’s too much of a chicken,” the angel Gabriel replied. The other angels started laughing while Lucifer embarked on weeping at their words and actions. “Do you think he’s up to the task, Michael?”
“No, he’s nothing but a little lightning bug chicken,” replied the angel Michael as they began pushing Lucifer around
in a circle, like a ball. “Come on, Lucy, you always said you had more powers than Father, why don’t you prove it?”
Lucifer dried his tears with his glowing wings and answered, “I will prove it to thee, but not today!”
The angel Michael ran up to Lucifer and pulled out a feather from his left wing, yelling out, “When will you do it?” Those words, the question of such an evil bearing, echoed in Jeremy’s mind, shielding his eyes with confusion as to whom these angels were, and why they were depicted doing actions of an evil nature. His eyes widened, pushing his mind to understand these scenes that his pupils dilated to, when suddenly he blinked, and turned away from the angels.
“It will be very soon,” Mary stated. Jeremy woke up in panic, with perspiration all over his face and body. Jeremy awoke from a deep, sleep-like trance, seizing the memory of bearing those angels and hearing their words still in his eyes, causing a brief moment of serenity to come to his voice.
“What will be very soon?” Jeremy asked. He dried his face, full of sweat, with the cloth, and sat there with perplexity in his mind.
“December twenty-fifth, I was telling Michael that December twenty-fifth will be coming up very soon,” Mary answered; Jeremy noticed it was night-time. He looked outside through a little window in their cell and wondered what it was he saw in his subconscious self, yearning for answers.
“How long was I out for?”
“You’ve been sleeping for three hours,” replied Sam.
Jeremy looked more closely out the window and then ran toward it, shouting, “Hey, I know how to get out of here!” Jeremy noticed he screamed it out too loud, so he said again, but in a much lower tone, “I know how we all could get out of here.” Looking back at the guards, he saw that no one was there so he ran up to the window even closer and saw that the wall was made of dirt mixed in with soft clay. He began pounding on it lightly, creating a small hole that blew hot and cold desert wind in.
“Well, genius, how could we get out of here?” Michael asked in the other cell, not being able to see Jeremy at all. Jeremy then made a hole as big as Mary’s little figure and started pounding on it more and more, finally creating a hole that was three times the size of Sam’s body. They jumped out of it slowly, not hearing Michael asking again, “Hello, how could we get out of here?”
Suddenly, Michael heard pounding on his wall from the outside, and in a matter of two minutes, Michael noticed the wall cracking. A hole was finally made and Michael climbed out of it and said with happiness, “You’re a frickin’ genius, Jeremy.”
They all ran to Gabriel’s cell and did the same thing. After they broke through David’s wall, one guard came into the room where the cells were and discovered their prisoners were missing.
“Go and hide, I’ll be right back,” Jeremy mumbled. He ran to the entrance of the jail and entered it. The guard ran into each of their cells, searching for their bodies while Jeremy grabbed the cross from off of the table. He ran out of the jail building and walked unnoticed over to where Gabriel, David, Michael and the girls were standing. “Alright, here you go,” Jeremy whispered in the darkness, handing Mary and Sam the cross. It started to shine its light toward the East, soaring through the darkened, star-lit skies. “Alright, I guess we go that way.” They all ran toward the stars, glimpsing them gleaming down onto the desert that they were about to enter, wondering how long it would take the troops to figure out which direction they went. Each of them knew the darkness was their protection, but once light came, a new quest for hiding would have to come into action: a quest they didn’t covet at all.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
They journeyed for another five days, totaling ten so far for their long, tiresome voyage that the boys knew they had to take on. Yet Mary and Sam, deep in their thoughts, desired a motive, other than the boys’ sickness, for why their feet should make another step, but their thoughts never became vocal; they just wanted to finish this journey. All of their mouths proceeded to get drier as the sand reflected the sunlight while each day passed, creating a permanent sand-like texture on their tongues, which felt as if it was being embroidered or burnt by the heat of the sweltering sun.
On the tenth day of their walk, their stroll on what was turning into a life or death condition, the fatigue became too great for Mary. Her knees gave out, and her body collapsed to the sandy ground. Since she was the last in line, while they all hunched over and walked like zombies through the sand of the titanic desert, no one knew or saw Mary plummet, leaving her there as she faced the sun with her eyes fastened shut. Mary didn’t even make a sound, a peep, all she could feel was numbness. Her last glimpse was of sweat squeezing out from her pores and plummeting to its death, hitting the hot sand and evaporating faster than her drained heart could pump. As she lay there, they still wandered, but then Gabriel stopped and turned around to see who was behind him, and saw that Mary was far away from them all, lying on the sand very still. Since Gabriel was third in line, with Jeremy leading them, and David second, and Michael behind Gabriel, he was able to stop Michael’s stride by holding up his hand and pushing him in the torso. Gabriel was too tired to talk, speak or yell, and, seeing that David and Jeremy were still walking, Gabriel gawked at Michael and then glared at Mary, hoping Michael would follow his eyesight to her body. Immediately, Sam, who was next after Michael, walked up to their standing figures and saw that Gabriel was looking at something behind her. So Sam, as well as Michael, followed Gabriel’s fatigued eyesight and searched through their foggy and unfocused eyes, peering at the direction Gabriel was looking in, and trying to focus on the spot. They wiped their eyes over and over again, and tried to block out the smoldering sun by covering the sun with their hands and creating a sort of sun shade for their eyes. Michael and Sam peered through the salt-like sweat that burned at their eyes and finally saw a figure lying silent on the sweltering sand, with a fragile face baking in the rays of the sun. It resembled Mary—it was Mary!
With a gulp of hot air, Gabriel inhaled, and yelled out with pain to his dry throat, “Stop, Mary needs water!” Jeremy and David stopped, looked out in front of them, and then turned their heads, seeing Gabriel, Michael and Sam walking toward Mary’s figure. Jeremy and David walked quickly, with whatever energy they had left, and reached Mary, kicking sand up in the air by accident and hitting Mary in the face with it. They all knelt down and brushed the sand away from her face. “She needs water, guys,” Gabriel said again. All Sam could do was rub Mary’s head and hope that one of the guys would come up with a plan.
Jeremy began crying silently, not knowing what to do, confused as to where he was going to get water for Mary and the rest of them. But his tears changed when unexpectedly David shouted, “Just leave her be, she wasn’t supposed to come here anyway!”
Jeremy’s concerned brown eyes shot toward David and glared at him with uncertainty. “Are you crazy? What’s gotten into you, David?” yelled Jeremy. He pushed David in the chest and he fell to the hot sand, with all of them looking at David in silence, not knowing how to react to his actions and words. Before David could push back, a mirage in the distance came to their sights, resembling palm trees that brought hope to their souls of hunger and thirst.
“My God, we’re saved,” David screamed, starting to run toward the palm trees.
As David ran, Jeremy and the rest stayed behind with Mary, and watched as she began coughing with pain. Jeremy screamed toward David, “David, it’s not real, it’s just a mirage!” Jeremy then turned back and noticed Mary smiling, smirking at Jeremy’s eyes widening with hurt in them.
“I’m going to die now, aren’t I? I am, aren’t I?”
“No, Mary, you’re not going to die,” replied Gabriel. Jeremy’s voice was silent in Mary’s weakness. Then, as Jeremy started to rub Mary’s forehead, the cross started shaking in Sam’s grip, shooting out light. It flew out from her grip and fell to the ground, and Jeremy looked at it and picked up the shiny cross in an angry fashion.
“What now, what do you wan
t from us?” yelled Jeremy in anger as he held the cross in the air and jammed it into the desert floor. “Someone is dying here and you still want us to find the damn Kerchief,” he shouted in madness, pulling the cross out off the desert floor and held it in the air again, ready to give it another toss. Before he could throw it, Jeremy’s eyes looked at the hole that he created with the cross and noticed water shooting out from it.
“My God, it’s a miracle,” said Sam with happiness. She began drinking the water as if it was a water fountain while Jeremy, Michael and Gabriel just stared at it, feeling this surreal moment and not believing or understanding its effects.
Mary turned her tired head and saw Sam drinking from the hole in the sand, seeing clear water raining from it, and said with happiness from her tired voice, “My God, the same thing happened in the Bible!”
Gabriel pulled her head toward the water and Mary drank from it, and finally Michael and Gabriel did the same. Yet Jeremy still gaped at the water, grasping bewilderment to its mixture; a grin came across his face and he looked up at the skies. Jeremy expected that this was a miracle and finally joined them in drinking the water from the sandy hole. David, who realized that Jeremy was right about the mirage, turned back, and drank from the hole as well, filling all of their bodies up with clear water and enjoying every minute of it. They drank the water continuously, and watched it make a miniature lake in the middle of the desert, splashing each other with it and playing like children of innocence and virtue. They drank it with contentment, pure happiness that the Lord, or some Lord, helped them not to see death. They became rejuvenated, and their eyes cried out tears of joy toward the heavens, with the sun not being as bright as it was before, for some reason, as if some being took a bit of the heat away from it just for them.
Once they finished their play and were satisfied with the water they drank, their eyes saw the miniature lake being sucked in the sand, leaving nothing to their sights, as if the lake never existed at all. “Hey, guys, guess what I found,” David said, getting up from the ground with them and getting ready to walk again.
The Wrath of Jeremy Page 18