by Mark Carver
The mist had begun to lift and I could see the quaint town of Susa lying below our monastery. I could see the decorative rooftops of historic houses and hotels, and the proud spires of Susa’s famous churches. And I heard the church bells ringing out - not with warm, cheery tones, but with panic, discordant and frightened.
Tears spilled down my cheeks, falling upon the cover of Isabella’s Bible. I looked down with surprise. I didn’t even know that I had taken it out. My teardrops discolored the leather where they fell, but I didn’t care.
I felt it too, that emptiness Father DeMarco had spoken of. There was a black hole inside my chest, swallowing my soul piece by piece. Every muscle in my body felt weak as I surveyed the chaos around me, watching the brethren scatter like frightened children. Some had rushed to the refectory, some were scampering towards their dormitory to pray, and others were simply standing in the grass, staring up at the sky.
The clouds were gray and heavy and I watched them with fearful eyes, afraid that the Dragon would appear above our humble monastery and raze it to the ground.
My soul felt like it had been torn apart by a savage animal. My vision shimmered as I stared up at the clouds, as thick and heavy as a wall of stone.
God…please…
I didn’t know what else to say. I could feel my spirit melting inside me.
Then I saw the smoke, a crooked black finger rising above the Susa skyline. I heard the sirens mingling with the clatter of the bells.
At that moment, I knew.
Hell is here.
****
THE JERUSALEM CHRONICLES
Volume Two:
The Revolution
Copyright 2014 Mark Carver. All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. All names, places, locations, and corporate entities are either the product of the writer’s imagination or are used in a satirical/non-literal manner. Any resemblance to any persons, either living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Susa, Italy
My God, my God, why have You forsaken us?
I couldn’t feel anything. My fingers, my hands, my tongue – everything felt as dead as driftwood. Tentacles of smoke curled high over Susa, my adopted home, but I couldn’t summon any sorrow to mourn for her.
I was mourning for someone else.
Part of me wanted to storm back into the chapel and slam Father DeMarco’s head against the altar until his face was bloody and broken. Part of me wanted to rush into town to catch a train to Paris to search for my Isabella amongst the rubble. An ember of hope that she was still alive struggled to burst into flame inside my heart, but it was smothered by grief, by anger, by helplessness.
What had happened to this world? How could God allow this?
Was it even real?
Everyone knew that terrorism was a very real threat in those days. Extremists of all faiths and factions clamored to get their names into the headlines. Perhaps this was just an elaborate, albeit deadly hoax, designed to sow confusion and strike terror into the hearts of good citizens everywhere. Maybe there had been no monstrous dragon in the skies over Paris. Maybe the devil hadn’t really shown his face to all of humanity…
But I knew it was true. I knew because of the voice, that terrifying voice from the darkest depths of hell that had brought all of us to our knees even when it was just a broadcasted recording. And I had heard it in my native French. When I saw the awestruck expressions on the faces of my brethren in the chapel, I knew they had heard it in their own languages as well.
And then there had been the mayhem that followed. It looked like a scene from a horror film – ordinary people turning into bloodthirsty beasts, ripping and slashing and even eating one another.
Maybe it was just terrorists, and they had unleashed a diabolical and fast-acting nerve agent…
My heart shuddered. I couldn’t believe I was even pondering these thoughts. This wasn’t a ghost story or a legend recorded by superstitious monks from the Dark Ages. This was happening now, in my world. In my country.
Oh God…
My family.
Ice-cold dread seized my trembling heart. My mother would be frightened out of her mind. Patric would be bawling in terror. The churches would be packed to the walls with terrified believers and sudden converts.
I looked up and saw the burning skyline. A shadow passed over my face.
The people weren’t terrified. They were furious.
And their fury was directed at us.
I felt a surge of electricity through my wooden limbs and I rushed back to the chapel. Flinging open the doors, I saw Father DeMarco still crumpled in a sobbing heap on the floor.
I threw aside my conflicting emotions as I wrapped my arms around him and hoisted him to his feet.
“Get up, Father,” I grunted as we collapsed onto the front pew together. I looked at his face, saw the tears streaming down his cheeks and soaking his beard. I had never seen such a heartbreaking picture of sorrow in my entire life.
“Tourec,” he whispered. His voice seemed as fragile as glass.
It was all I could do to keep from crying myself. Sniffing roughly to cover my grief, I squared my jaw and looked him full in the face.
“Father, please, you must tell us what to do.”
“She’s gone, Tourec!” he wailed, clinging to me like a demented grandmother. “I sent her to die…”
I pulled away from his grip. “Listen to me, Father. You did not cause this. We don’t know for sure that she’s dead, but even if she is, whoever or whatever caused this is to blame. And right now, things are out of control out there. You are our father. You must tell us what to do.”
Father DeMarco’s lips trembled and a strand of spittle trailed from his mouth like a spider web. He looked at me with weak, childish eyes, and I became furious. I leaped to my feet, letting him fall heavily to the pew.
“Then stay down there, old man! Let the devil take you too!”
My skin felt like it was burning as I burst through the chapel doors out into the dismal daylight once again. I looked around and saw the brethren running about like startled cattle. Their fear and confusion was as odious to me as Father DeMarco’s lack of spine. Looking down at the town in chaos, I knew something had to be done. And I knew that we were the ones who had to do it.
“Brothers!” I yelled with all of my strength.
The monks and postulants froze in their tracks. Like newly-hatched turtles drawn to the moonlight, they crept closer to me, as if I had just spoken an alien language.
I stared at their faces. I registered the expressions and emotions of each of them.
Fear, confusion, anxiety, doubt, hopelessness, near-insanity.
I felt all of these things as well. But I knew I could not let them break the surface.
“Brothers!” I cried out again. Raising my hand high, I pointed towards the burning town below us.
“I do not know if the devil has truly come to this world, but I know that down there are good people who need our help! We must protect the churches and the relics and most importantly, the believers. Go, get whatever weapons you can find! We must defend them with force if we must!”
Nobody moved. I wanted to punch them in their stupid sheep-like faces.
“Go!” I bellowed with fury I never knew I possessed.
Everyone jumped as if my words had been a shockwave. The brethren rushed to the tool shed and to the kitchen. Some headed to the dormitory and I wondered what kind of weaponry they would find there. I was startled to see them returning with broken chair legs, the nails still protruding. I had gone to the wood pile and retrieved the axe we used for splitting firewood logs.
We assembled on the grass in front of the monastery, watching the smoke become thicker. I looked at the men standing beside me. Not everyone who lived in the monastery had gathered with us. I had not expected them to. I imagined that many were hiding or praying or perhaps had even fled into the hills. But the ones that had come looked prepared for battle. Some w
ere young, some were older. Some had spent a lifetime in the ministry and some, like me, were still navigating their way through the waters, trying to discern if the ministry was their true calling.
None of that mattered now.
The air seemed to crackle around us. I looked up at the clouds, watched them churn slowly, as if God were stirring them with his finger.
I lowered my eyes to the once-quiet town of Susa.
“Let’s go.”
Thinking back to that moment, I am astounded at the change that had come over the brethren in that short span of time. No one questioned what we were doing; no one raised an objection to say that we were men of peace who overcame evil with good. No one argued that prayer was our weapon and fasting was our battering ram against the forces of darkness. No one fell behind to run back to the altar and beg God to make sense of all this madness.
It’s hard to describe the feeling that bound us all together at that moment. Perhaps the best analogy I can use is the feeling one gets when their family is threatened, and they know they will do anything to protect them. That’s how we felt – we weren’t simply men of the cloth sequestered away on a sleepy hillside, far from the temptations and distractions of the world, burying our noses in ancient books and mumbling Latin as we went about our chores. Even though most of us rarely interacted with the believers in town, we felt that our family was in danger.
I am ashamed to admit that was the first time I truly felt like I was part of the “body of Christ.” I had heard the expression in a thousand sermons, read it in countless books, but I had never really felt like I was part of a “body.” I felt connected to God, of course, and to my earthly family, and to Isabella, but I hadn’t given much thought to the believers around the world that I would never meet but who prayed to the same God as I did.
As we flew down the road, our simple leather shoes smacking against the pavement, clubs and shovels clutched in our white-knuckled hands, I felt a bond with my brethren that I had never felt before. I knew at that moment that I would fight for and die for any of them. I didn’t know what we were rushing into but having them by my side gave me courage.
I glanced at Brother Frederic as we ran. His face was bright red and his glasses were fogged with perspiration streaming down his brow, but his face was grim and hard. I got a chilling feeling that he had faced violence before. The others wore a mixture of expressions, ranging from wide-eyed fear to fascination and even excitement.
My heart clutched with pain as my mind drifted to the priest, my adopted father, weeping on the rough wooden pew. Weeping for the daughter that we both knew was dead. The daughter who had been ripped from this earth by the devil himself.
Isabella…
The wind whistling in my ears seemed to whisper her name. I clenched my teeth as my fingers tightened around the axe handle. I wanted to bury the dull metal blade in someone’s skull.
Like a lightning bolt searing my brain, the image of my mother flashed through my mind. I screeched to a halt just on the outskirts of the town. The clanging church bells and the screams of terror reached my ears but I heard nothing.
I collapsed to my knees when I saw my mother’s face. She was weeping.
I looked down at my hands – the hands that had clutched the weapon I carried, so eager to deal out death and destruction.
I wasn’t a soldier, or a killer. None of us were. I was just a lowly postulant.
What were we doing? What was this madness?
The others came a stop when they saw me fall behind. They all looked at me and I looked at them. I saw the town burning behind them, and my eyes shone with tears.
I opened my mouth to speak, but a piercing shriek silenced my words. The brethren whirled around and I looked with them down the road.
A nun was stumbling up the street towards us. Her habit was in tatters and the right side of her face was streaked with blood. Hard on her heels was a menacing, muscle-bound man with wild eyes.
“Come here, you pious bitch!” he snarled, reaching out towards her with claw-like fingers.
The nun screamed again and crashed blindly into Brother Frederic. The man chasing her grunted with surprise when he saw the cluster of monks blocking the road.
I rose quickly to my feet as the man eyed our weapons. He bared his teeth and he pointed a finger towards the flames roaring behind him.
“You see that? Where is your God now?”
Brother Frederic pushed the nun aside and stepped towards the man. Like a lumberjack taking aim at a tree, he swung his shovel with all his might at the man’s head.
I don’t know if the man was too surprised to see a monk charging towards him or if he just had bad reflexes, but he started to duck only when it was far too late. The head of Brother Frederic’s shovel crashed into the man’s skull, sending a spray of blood into the air. The man pitched forward and fell like a sack of wheat. Blood instantly started pooling around his head. His eyes were still open.
All of us gasped at this horrific act of violence, but Brother Frederic’s face remained as hard as a stone. He looked down at the nun who was quivering on the ground. She looked like she was about to burst into a fit of hysterics.
I stared at Brother Frederic in awe and horror as he stood there like a statue. Fires raged behind him and he kept a tight grip on his shovel. Blood dripped from the rusty shovel head and trickled down the street.
Without saying a word, he turned and dashed towards the mayhem.
After a long tortured moment, we followed.
The town was in a frenzy. Everywhere we looked, people were screaming, rushing through the picturesque historic streets, clutching their children to their chests. Cars and shops were burning and rioters were smashing windows with alarming quickness. Sirens wailed and policemen were locked in fierce hand-to-hand combat with furious youths who fought like demons. For a moment, I was horrorstruck by the possibility that the mass possession that had fallen upon the unfortunate crowd at Notre-Dame Cathedral had happened here too. But as I watched, paralyzed, I realized that these assailants were lashing out with fury that came from within.
I had feared that only Christians and churches were being targeted but the entire town seemed to be overcome with madness. I saw priests and nuns fleeing and sometimes fighting the wild mobs, but I also saw business owners and shopkeepers struggling to keep looters away from their property.
The brethren and I clustered together, frantically glancing every which way, wondering what to do next. Then I heard a deafening roar and I looked up in time to see the roof of St. Stephano’s Church of the Martyr erupt in flames. The church bell clanged like a frightened animal, begging for rescue.
I tugged on the sleeves of those around me and pulled them towards the burning church.
“Let’s go!” I shouted above the noise. “There might be people inside!”
“I will say here!” Brother Frederic said. “You go, see if you can save anyone.”
I saw the bloodlust in his eyes and my heart felt heavy with sadness. The devil had indeed come to earth and his hand had touched us all…
“Go!” he said, clutching his shovel and rushing towards a mob that was swarming over several nuns. He swung his shovel like a baseball bat, slamming bodies to the ground and cracking skulls with wanton abandon.
The other brethren watched with shock on their faces. I too was mesmerized by the transformation that had come over him but I knew we had little time to reach the burning church.
“Come on! We can’t stay here!”
I thank God the mobs didn’t notice us as we raced towards the church. If we had been attacked, who knows what would have happened to us.
Or what we would have done…
We reached the steps of the church and our hearts sank. The entire building was engulfed in flames. Several young men with handkerchiefs wrapped around their faces were hurling rocks at the gorgeous 16th century stained glass windows. I could feel my spirit cracking with each sound of shattering glass. They scatte
red when they saw us and our crude but intimidating weapons.
I gazed up at the burning building. It was hopeless. There was no way to save the church, and anyone inside was –
“Help! Help us!”
My ears picked up the faint but earnest cry, and I looked up to the ornate arcade that stood above the church portals like a row of stone trees. Smoke billowed out between the columns, and I could see an elderly priest and three middle-aged nuns about twenty feet above us. I recognized the man. He was Father Angelo, a good friend of Father DeMarco’s and an occasional visitor to the monastery. I remembered being struck by his somber demeanor and wondering if the man ever smiled. But now his face was a mask of frantic desperation. He waved his arms wildly over his head, even though we all saw him.
The brethren and I exchanged worried glances. There was no way to go into the church to save them, but we couldn’t leave them to die. My heart was pounding and sweat and tears stung my eyes. The air was thick with smoke and it was getting hard to breathe, but adrenaline was giving us the power we needed to stay on our feet.
An idea came to me. I dropped my axe and rushed over to a looted shop next to the church. I reached through the shattered window, careful to avoid the jagged shards of glass. Pulling with all my strength, I wrenched the heavy curtain free from its fastenings and bundled it into my arms.
“Here!” I said as I rushed back to the brethren gathered on the steps. “We can use this!”
They looked at me like I had lost my mind, and perhaps I had. But there was no other way.
The curtain was about three meters square and made of heavy fabric, and a quick glance upwards confirmed that fortunately none of those in danger were overweight. In fact, all of the nuns were quite petite, and the priest was thin and lanky as well. I gave the curtain fabric a good strong yank and was pleased when it didn’t tear. I knew it was a long shot but it was our only chance.
The smoke stabbed our eyes like needles as we inched closer to the church until we were right below the arcade. I could hear the sounds of breaking glass and cracking wood coming from inside the church. I had been inside that glorious sanctuary many times, and in my mind’s eye I saw it as it must have been now – a blackened husk, flames licking at the icons and relics like hungry tongues from hell.