by S. L. Duncan
“I think that’s why I found the structure of the church so appealing. It offered a foundation from which I could find stability and thus, happiness. My parents didn’t mind the decision, either.”
“I’m not going into the seminary.”
“That’s not what I mean. Your path is your path. How you are to walk it is up to you.”
Fragmented images tore through Gabe’s mind. Everywhere he looked, he could see flame. “What if in the end the things you do make no difference? What if everything is predestined and what happens is going to happen no matter what?”
“God gave us free will, the opportunity to be whom or what we choose to be. Good. Evil. Both. This is the human experience, what this whole life on Earth is all about. I certainly don’t regret the choices I’ve made. I never would have been in a position to adopt you had I not chosen to be a part of the church. Just because you can’t see the path ahead doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. You’ll find yours.”
Gabe thought of the nightmare and wondered if he had seen his path, but saying it out loud would only make it more real. More insane. He wanted to forget everything about the night, get it behind him, and feel better. He tried to think of something, anything else that would distract his worries. “Do you think my diagnosis will affect my NYU admission?”
“No, but what is important right now is that you get better. University concerns will take care of themselves.”
A moment of silence lingered between them.
“You wanted to see the ball drop in Times Square, did you not?” his father asked.
“Yeah, but there isn’t time. And there’s no way we could get there, especially in this traffic.”
“Well, we could do the next best thing,” he said and turned up the volume on the radio. “Just use your imagination.”
Gabe nodded, forcing a smile.
The shouts of laughter and cheers on the radio once again filled the car. As they drove, the radio frequency dropped slightly, making a hissing static sound.
Gabe felt the beating of his heart triple. His mind filled with images of the burning city. The sound of the crowd on the radio warped, their joyous outburst turning shrill. Their laughter became screams of pain.
A cold sweat moved over his skin, and he began to breathe heavily.
“You feeling okay?” his dad asked.
“I did see something when I was having my . . . seizure,” Gabe said, his confession just loud enough that the radio couldn’t drown him out.
His father slowed the car and glanced back and forth from Gabe to the road. “You can tell me about it.”
“I don’t know. It was weird. A hallucination or something, like you said.” Gabe hesitated and looked at his father, encouraged by his stiff upper lip.
He nodded. “Go on.”
“I think I saw the end of the world.”
CHAPTER NINE
Set against the billowing snow, the exterior of the cathedral was certainly worthy of admiration. The carved stone façade over the entrance portrayed a scene of angels battling gargoyle creatures, their forms locked in combat, faces fixed in anguish.
Twin bell towers provided a symmetrical grandeur to the building and reached into the night like arms held up to God in praise. Spotlights angled toward each of their four corners and illuminated snowflakes that sparkled in their beams, giving the impression that the towers were somehow magical.
Below, a man once known as Pastor McPherson stood outside, examining every detail, the bitter weather met with little regard. He was taller now, with broad shoulders and a barrel chest. Gone from his face were decades of life, replaced by a youthful and handsome appearance.
The long coat covering his black suit ruffled in the wind. All his senses focused in perfect synchronicity, hell-bent on one single objective: kill the boy.
Richard lamented being at the cathedral this late. Especially on New Year’s Eve, he thought. But under the circumstances, agreeing to Father Adam’s request was the right move. With any luck, he hoped such favor might play into a more permanent position.
Right now there were parties at school raging into the night—even the seminary students knew how to let loose—but he was not invited to them. Not that he would have gone, anyway. The immaturity his classmates so often displayed would be showcased in every way tonight. Such behavior is beneath me, he thought and went to lock the main entrance to the sanctuary that led to the street.
The key to the lock hid somewhere on the overwhelmed key chain. Richard counted at least twenty keys on the ring. One after another he stuck into the lock until finally it turned. The noise it made sounded like the sliding bolt of a rifle being cocked, echoing throughout the sanctuary.
Richard thought of a firing squad. Exactly what I’ll face if I forget to do anything. He then switched off the power to the main lights. The vaulted ceiling disappeared, swallowed by the night.
He decided to return to the office and wait for Father Adam. In the back of his mind, he felt uneasiness grow as he crossed the sanctuary. The hovering darkness above forced a shiver, and he dared not look again. Going through his mental checklist of chores helped to ease his nerves, but the television in the office would work even better. His step quickened.
There was a noise at the front door. A thump and then a heavier bang, like something or someone outside had fallen against the wood.
His first instinct was to stay quiet, thinking they would likely leave if unacknowledged.
But if it’s somebody who needs help . . .
“Hello?” Richard shouted at the door, hoping his voice would carry through its thickness. “We’re closed for the evening. Thank you.” Vagrants will move on. If there is an emergency, somebody will shout back or knock harder, he thought.
The door moaned and creaked, as if the wind was blowing against the entrance. Richard recalled something on the radio earlier in the day about a winter storm and wished he’d paid attention to how bad it was supposed to get.
Air seeped through the hinges on the frame. Candles flickered, their weakened flames threatening total darkness for a moment until they steadied, and light returned to the room.
Then silence.
Against his intuition, Richard considered checking the lock. Then another sound—one that could only be made with a key—the bolt inching out of the socket. Father Adam and Gabriel are back from the hospital, he thought. It came as a relief, though not without a hint of embarrassment for his cowardice.
Before he reached the doors to greet them, the hinges cracked. The doors blew open and slammed against the wall.
A man in black appeared from the shadows. Wind slipped by and extinguished all the candles by the entrance. His hands were clasped behind him, and upon entering, he turned and closed the door, sealing the weather outside.
“Pardon the intrusion,” the man said. Each syllable carried a meticulous pronunciation cast with an accent that hinted at a formal education. He did not approach Richard but instead walked along the outer walls, keeping several rows of pews between them, like a shark circling its prey. “I am Septis, sent by Mastema. I have come seeking you.”
“Excuse me?” Richard tried to gather his wits. “The cathedral is closed until the second of January.”
“Ah yes. The cathedral. I love them, you know. Their majesty. Their craftsmanship. A challenge to the very creativity of God himself.” Septis removed a cigarette from a case and lit it. The flame from the match highlighted his ice-blue eyes. He closed them and inhaled, holding the smoke in, savoring the taste.
Richard took several steps back, away from Septis. Something in the way he said “God” sparked a feeling of panic.
“That is their true purpose, is it not?” Septis said. “A tribute to man’s artistry?” He disappeared behind a large pillar. The shadows surrounding it deepened and bled across the walls and over the pews. They moved with an unnatural flow, extinguishing what remained of the candlelight near the door.
“I sense no power in you y
et, boy,” his disembodied voice spoke from the opposite end of the sanctuary.
Richard spun, surprised by the direction of the sound.
“Unlearned and unprepared. Pity.” This time the voice echoed from the growing shadows in another corner of the sanctuary. Each word lingered in the air, mocking Richard with an arrogance of strength.
He searched for movement in the shadows as they closed in, their undulating darkness surrounding him, cutting off escape. “Who are you?”
“I am deception and war.” Septis’s voice moved from one side of the room to the other.
The shadows deepened at the entrance, drowning the remainder of light. They flowed like lava over several rows of pews and crawled up walls, with whispers of hissing and chattering.
“I am strife and jealousy,” he continued.
“No, please,” Richard sputtered over the sounds in the shadows. Tears streamed from his eyes.
“I am wrath and revenge.” Septis emerged from the thick darkness as if from behind a curtain, cigarette smoke curling away from his mouth, becoming shadow, as if by magic.
Hundreds of red eyes formed in the blackness that gathered around him. Their snakelike voices drowned out the sounds from the outside world.
Kill him . . .
Eat him . . .
Tear his flesh . . .
Break his bones . . .
He wants Solomon’s book . . .
Mustn’t let him read it, no . . .
Mustn’t let him discover its secret . . .
Richard felt something snap in his mind—a primal, instinctual trigger that told him to run for his life. He turned and fled from the entrance, keys jangling violently in his hands. Adrenaline pumped through his veins, his pulse beating in his ears. His heart thundered against his chest, driving him forward. Yet with all his effort, he knew it would not be enough.
Septis leapt into the air, propelled by an inhuman growl. He covered the entire length of the sanctuary and landed with his black dress shoes on the boy’s shoulders, driving him into the floor. His neck broke at impact, killing him before his body even hit the granite.
Intoxicated by the kill, Septis took another exaggerated drag off his cigarette while standing on the boy’s back. Spreading his arms out as if receiving prayer, he laughed at the image of the outstretched arms of Christ in the stained glass window above.
Some of the ash fell from the cigarette onto his trophy. Septis bent down and twisted the lifeless head to face him. Bones broke and tendons popped in the corpse’s neck. Fixed eyes stared back, lifeless, frozen in horror from their final moment.
Near the altar, an enormous metal cross hung from the ceiling, suspended by heavy steel cord. The shadows noticed it, too, and their hissing became agitated.
Septis stepped off the body and went to the altar, hurling it from his way. He tore the cross from the ceiling, steel cords snapping in half and ripping from the walls, and laid it beside the body. From inside his jacket he pulled out a knife and removed it from its protective sleeve. He kneeled next to the corpse, bending low to press his face to its cheek, then placed the point of the knife on the boy’s sternum. He turned the head so that the vacant eyes looked upwards to the colored image in the stained glass window and whispered, “Who will dare deny us now that you are dead, Fortitudo Dei?”
He plunged the blade into the boy’s still heart with a sickening crunch of bone splitting in two.
CHAPTER TEN
Slow down!” Gabe shouted.
His father ignored the protest and accelerated the car.
“You’re going to get thrown in jail!”
They sped through the city, negotiating the intersecting streets. Turning a sharp corner, their headlights found the trunk of a yellow cab. His dad jammed his foot on the brakes to avoid collision. The antilock mechanism rocked the car with vibrations.
Gabe grabbed the faux leather handlebar on the dash and braced for impact as the car slowed, just short of the cab.
His father cursed under his breath. The panic in his voice caused his accent to become more pronounced. Sometimes, when he was upset or excited, Gabe couldn’t understand him at all.
“What the hell is wrong with you, driving like this?” On the dash, Gabe felt indentions the shape of his fingers in the handle. The feeling of being out of control, especially at the hands of his father of all people, was something foreign, terrifying.
Still, his father ignored him, focused only on the street ahead.
They rode the cab’s bumper for a calm minute, boxed in their lane by traffic, before something caught his dad’s eye. “What’s that?” He leaned into the steering wheel for a better view.
“Never mind. Concentrate on the road.”
“There. In the sky.”
Gabe relented and peered through the windshield and beyond the buildings in the distance to see an all too familiar orange glow coloring the sky.
“That’s the direction of the cathedral,” he said and hit the horn, causing the car next to them to stop short as he cut in front. The engine revved, and the front end lifted, pushing Gabe back into his seat. The car lurched forward faster and sped around the cab. “Put on your seat belt,” his father said. He seemed desperate.
“Trust me. It’s been on since we left the hospital.” Gabe tightened the band over his chest, ensuring its tension.
They veered into oncoming traffic to get around another cab, but then his dad jerked the wheel at the sight of flashing headlights and swerved back into their lane. The sound of a horn blared past his window.
“You’re going to get us killed,” Gabe said.
They turned onto a street filled with traffic, ignoring the red light. Cars slid on the snow and asphalt, brake pads smoking in a near pileup. His father spun the wheel again and righted the car onto the road leading to the cathedral. The sudden change in direction threw Gabe into the passenger door, his shoulder ramming the hard plastic.
“We’re almost there. Hold tight.” He then gasped and stood on the brakes, hurtling Gabe toward the windshield. The seat belt locked and snapped him back, his face barely missing the dash. They skidded to a stop just ahead of a gridlock of unmoving vehicles swarmed by hundreds of people.
A hellish light flickered behind the buildings. It illuminated the sky and cast the whole city block into silhouette.
Gabe caught a glimpse of smoke behind a building and instantly recognized the shape of one of the towers. “The cathedral,” he said. “It’s burning.”
“Dear God, no . . .”
Ahead, blue lights spun on the police cars that blocked the intersection.
Flames as tall as buildings, both awesome and terrible, burned into the sky. One of the outer walls buckled out from the sanctuary and crumbled to the ground. Showers of spark and ember flew into the air as the last tower toppled, its bell cutting through the burning brick and mortar.
His father put the car in park and threw open his door. “Stay here. Look after the car.”
Gabe ignored his father and followed him toward a police officer pushing back the stream of people trying to get closer to the spectacle.
His dad pointed to the burning church and grabbed his clerical collar to present to the cop. “Please. Let me by. I need to speak with whoever is in charge. This is my cathedral.”
The officer stood aside and held out his hand, offering a way past. His eyes looked sad, sympathetic. “Whatever you say, pal. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. It ain’t good.”
Smoke and fire whipped about in the swirling air currents, casting shadows onto the ground and adjacent buildings. The orange-lit cloud and smoke and the ash that merged with snow blowing through the air were indistinguishable.
Gabe stared at the wreckage, staying behind as his father disappeared into the crowd. A feeling, like a growing warmth at the base of his skull, anchored to a spot just above his neck and radiated into his body as if something inside him, like a sixth sense or intuition, was sending a warning.
Fire
fighters at the edge of the blaze had shifted priorities from saving the church to preventing the fire from spreading. Their tanker trucks fired jets of water onto the ruins from hoisted ladders. Rivers of black water flowed through the streets and gutters.
Feeling scared and alone, Gabe searched for his father in the crowd. Police wrangled with the mob of onlookers, and reporters gathered around the grassy area in front of the cathedral, their interest drawn away from the inferno. Lights from the cameras of a television crew cast beams through the smoke. People pressed against a police barrier, their mass forming a wall that blocked Gabe from seeing what was beyond until one of the firemen parted the mob.
The moment froze in his mind like a photograph—Richard’s body, smoking and mutilated, hanging upside down on a cross sticking out of the ground.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A taxi horn woke Gabe. He sat up, squinting at the morning sunlight, and checked his surroundings, half expecting to see the burning cathedral. The car had been moved since last night, where he had retreated after witnessing the horrible scene with Richard. Gabe tried not to think about it as he lay alone in the backseat with his father’s jacket draped over him.
Sleeping in a pretzeled position for so many hours had left his body stiff and sore. The muscles in his legs and back felt taut like pulled ropes, ready to snap. He used the roomy space in the back of the car to stretch in hopes of relieving some of the tension.
Outside, the street looked busy enough with traffic and pedestrians—all going somewhere in a hurry despite it being New Year’s Day. Most everybody wore a suit.
The Financial District.
A No Parking sign was visible just outside the passenger window. Soot caked the hood, and ash still dirtied the windshield. Gabe caught a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror. Hair stuck out like he’d slept in an electric chair. His clothes hung in a mess of wrinkles.