Precious Blood

by Tonya Hurley

  Heavy leaden stained glass windows depicting horrific scenes of torture and death, brought nearly to life in the flickering flames, lined the perimeter. Beheadings, beatings, burnings, and worse were ornately rendered in the most beautiful and gruesome detail. In the shimmering candlelight, the windows took on an almost 3D quality, their images floating on the fog as if at the command of a midnight movie projectionist. It was part chapel, part chamber of horrors.

  “We think we’ve got problems,” Cecilia said to Lucy, studying the panels.

  Cecilia thought it was odd that the perimeter was lined with windows when it was literally impossible for any natural light to sweep through them at that depth.

  Lucy walked over to one of the pedestaled figures and unsuccessfully attempted to loosen the knot. In front of the statues on a base of its own, Cecilia saw a gold-framed glass case, the same exact one from her nightmare, misted over and shattered on the front side, through the haze. She wiped the dust and grime away carefully, looking for the rings from her dream.

  She rolled the grit around her fingertips for a while, confused.

  “What is this place?” Cecilia mused.

  “A crypt?” Agnes said, awestruck.

  “This actually looks like a place I visited with my father in the Czech Republic,” Lucy said. “Like an ossuary. A bone closet. It was a chapel constructed entirely of skeleton parts under the Cemetery Church of All Saints.”

  “You went there for vacation?” Cecilia asked.

  “It was grotesque, but extraordinarily beautiful at the same time, just like this place,” Lucy explained. “All these bones of people who died during the Black Death were dug up and intricately sculpted into furniture and religious fixtures by a half-blind monk.”

  “It just keeps getting better,” CeCe murmured.

  “It was an unbelievable sight, like this. A work of art. A real masterpiece. We talked about it for hours, days, after,” Lucy rambled, the thought of being with her dad forcing out the fear that was making its way in as she scanned the windows that lined the entire perimeter of the room.

  Agnes approached the lecterns on either side of the altar and stopped. Both books were open. One book was clearly a Bible; a five-ribbon marker hung from it and she opened the book to the page indicated by the first one. It read “Psalmus.” Frustrated at both her difficulty seeing the pages in the smoky room as well as her inability to read it, she moved over to the other lectern and noted three bookmarkers streaming from that book.

  It was a leather-bound and elaborately illustrated tome, sitting inside a wooden case. A tiny key, for a lock, she assumed, sat on the open pages. She’d never seen anything like it and browsed through with the utmost care. It was the first book she’d ever seen that needed protection. Did it need to be locked up to protect it, or to protect others from it? she wondered to herself.

  “Are those the instructions for this place?” Cecilia asked sarcastically.

  “Sort of,” Agnes said, slowly turning pages. “It’s stories. Biographies, I think.”

  Like the markings on the door, the text was in Latin and very old, as far as she could tell. She grasped the book and turned to its front cover.

  It read “Legenda Aurea.”

  Lucy tried to make sense of a bunch of random items—a life-size wooden box in the shape of a person, like a sarcophagus with eyeholes but without any of the facial detail, carved from wood with a hinged opening, the lid inscribed with more Latin that she couldn’t understand:

  Mortificate ergo membra vestra quae sunta super terram2

  She opened it and was shocked to find rows of fine needles and short spikes affixed to the interior. Frightened, she stepped away, afraid to touch the box or even to close it. It was far more scary than sacred to her. But not as horrifying as what she stumbled upon next to it.

  A Venetian mirror. Antique and encrusted with soot. Lucy licked the side of her hand and wiped at the mirror glass, able to clear only a small portion of it. Just enough to see the reflection of her eyes, which were red, puffy, and streaked with runny mascara. It was the first good look she’d had of herself since she arrived. She tried to wipe away the rest, but the more she saw, the less she liked it. Hair undone. Flecks of dried blood still visible on her forehead and nose from when she arrived.

  “I look so . . . ugly,” she murmured to herself, uncharacteristically self-critical.

  Less ominous but just as odd, Cecilia noticed a rusted toolbox, fireplace tools, timber, and rope were scattered around. None seemed to be modern construction tools or to have come from the church above. They were older. A coal stove, poorly vented, was glowing red and smoking, the source of the hot, sooty murk that pervaded the space. An urn, also full of smoldering coals, sat atop it. It felt like a sauna. Uncomfortably and unnaturally warm and steamy. A place to sweat out impurities. As the gray smoke vented slowly out the partially open chapel doorway, the remainder of the room revealed itself.

  The entire room looked to them like a storage unit that had been long ago forgotten.

  Agnes stepped off the altar and stared at the floor beneath her.

  “See this?” she asked the others.

  On the tiled floor, the symbols from their chaplets identical to the ones carved into the door.

  “It seems,” Cecilia said, “we were expected.”

  “Jesse Arens?” Frey asked, his voice cutting in and out from the horrible reception.

  “Possibly. Who’s this?”

  “I have an exclusive story for you,” Frey announced anonymously. “You like exclusives, don’t you?”

  “Who is this? How did you get this number?”

  “There’s been a murder. The victim was found at the bottom of an elevator shaft at Perpetual Help. A patient who escaped from the psych ward last weekend is suspected.”

  “Then call the police. Or the city desk. Homicide isn’t exactly my thing. Why call me?”

  Jesse was about to hang up.

  “Have you seen your friend Lucy lately?”

  Jesse felt his body go numb and a sick feeling rise up from his stomach.

  “No,” he said tersely and paused. “Why?”

  “A local Park Slope girl, high school student, was reported missing yesterday. A female musician from Williamsburg too. I think your friend may be involved in some way as well. They were all treated in the emergency room last Saturday night, the night the killer escaped.”

  “Is this like some kind of ‘bad things come in threes’ occult thing you’re pushing?” Jesse laughed tensely. “Sounds like a stretch, if you ask me.”

  “I’m not the superstitious type.”

  This guy sounded dead serious, Jesse thought. And nobody else knew Lucy had gone missing, as far as he was aware, besides the bouncer. He was starting to worry.

  “I’m asking you again, why are you telling me this?”

  “Because you love her, don’t you? You would do anything to help her, to find her.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. If you know anything, you know she hates me.”

  “Don’t I? I’ve seen your posts. Seen the way you write about her in such flattering terms. The way you photograph her. Only certain angles, her legs, her chest, her hands, her lips.”

  “Strictly business,” Jesse said unconvincingly. “Who the hell is this?”

  The line went dead.

  He chewed impatiently on his fingernails and waited for a call back, but it never came. The name on his caller ID simply said Perpetual Help Hospital. It was a big place. Could’ve been anybody, he thought. Whoever this was, though, had gotten way inside Jesse’s head. Finally, he hit call back and it rang through to a voice mail.

  “You’ve reached the Department of Psychiatry and the Office of Department Chairman Dr. Frey. For prescription refills, press one. If you’d like to make an appointment with”—the robotic female greeting was replaced with another, more familiar, male voice.

  “Dr. Alan Frey,” he intoned.

  �
��Please press two.”

  Jesse pressed two.

  Agnes focused her gaze upward at the walls and the others followed suit. A single word had been recently painted in black over and over in the empty spaces between the ancient Latin phrases originally inscribed in the gilt and plastered ceiling. Swirling. Twisting. Turning.

  CIPHER.

  “Jesus,” Cecilia whispered in awe.

  “Sebastian,” Agnes whispered, voicing what they were all thinking.

  “It’s like automatic writing,” Lucy muttered. “Real OCD shit.”

  “More like graffiti, I’d say,” Cecilia added. “Some kind of warning.”

  The heat and haze were oppressive. Worse than anything they’d ever experienced on even the hottest and muggiest summer day in the city.

  “I’m . . . feeling . . . dizzy,” Agnes said, overcome, as she collapsed into Cecilia’s arms.

  “Agnes!” Cecilia shouted, dropping to her knees with Agnes draped over her lap like a living pietà.

  Lucy rushed to them, checking Agnes’s breathing and her heartbeat, feeling her forehead for fever.

  “She’s burning up,” Lucy said, accusingly. “She should have left. We should have made her go.”

  “Wake up. Please,” Cecilia begged, as she stroked Agnes’s long hair gently and supported her with the other arm. Agnes complied. She was delirious. Her body stiffened and her head snapped back.

  “I think she’s having a seizure!” Lucy yelled.

  “Ne discesseris a me,” Agnes moaned over and over again, spewing Latin as if in a trance. “Quoniam tribulatio proxima est quoniam non est qui adiuvet.”

  Cecilia leaned back and Lucy’s eyes widened. Frightened. She looked up around her and brought her trembling hands to her lips at a sudden realization.

  “Now I’m freaked out,” Lucy said. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Cecilia scolded. “She’s sick. It’s just random.”

  “Cecilia,” Lucy stammered, pointing to a section of the wall above them. “She’s not babbling. She—she’s reading.”

  “But her eyes are closed. . . . ” Cecilia’s voice trailed off.

  “She looks possessed or something. Out of her mind.”

  “Possessed? In a church? I—”

  Lucy turned toward the door, alarmed by the sound of old hinges grinding and popping. Like barking. “Do you hear that? Dogs behind the door. Cecilia!”

  She ran to the door and pushed it shut. Lucy stood with her back against it for a moment, eyes shut, needing to feel something solid, supportive, while she waited for the growls to fade. Relieved, she opened her eyes, but it was harder to see now. The slamming door extinguished the rows of votives, leaving just three alight, turning the chapel into a virtual cave, illuminated only by the burning wicks. Darkness fell over them like a shroud.

  “We might be better off upstairs. Cecilia. Cecilia? Don’t you hear me?”

  “I hear music.”

  “What?”

  Cecilia was expressionless, not from fear but deep in thought. Entranced. The color drained from her and her skin began to take on the amber hue of the candle flames. She swayed, trying to catch Agnes’s beat. Lucy ran for the door and pulled it closed.

  “I understand,” Cecilia said in amazement. “I understand her. ‘Depart not from me. For tribulation is very near. And there is none to help me.’ ”

  They repeated the words together, in time, like a prayer. Agnes in Latin, and Cecilia in English. The sound reverberated around the circular room, swirling.

  “Stop it!” Lucy screamed, overwhelmed, grabbing for her face and falling to her knees, the others’ chant filling her ears. “Cecilia, something is so wrong here. What the hell is happening?”

  Lucy looked up at the image of the Sacred Heart before her and felt her skin flush and heart begin to race as if she’d just run a marathon. As she tried desperately to calm herself, small beads of sweat began to collect in the pores of her face and scalp and tumble under their own weight down her forehead, cheeks, and chin. Black trails of blood seemed to flow from the heart, though she couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t just the tears streaking her eyes or water damage running through the cracked plaster. The image at the back wall began to undulate on the waves of mist.

  “Do you see that?” she asked, trying to refocus through the smoke and glycerin. “It’s beating.”

  Lucy was transfixed.

  Cecilia laid Agnes gently on her back and stood.

  “I see it too,” she said, staring until she’d become too dizzy to stand. Cecilia began to teeter, like a jumper on a narrow window ledge. Turning almost as pale as the bone in the chandelier above, she stumbled backward, slipping and falling into the iron maiden behind her with enough force that the cabinet doors closed in on her.

  She was pierced, back, front, and side, by the small nails affixed to the interior of the cabinet, too many to count, and was forced to remain upright and still. An inch forward or back risked unimaginable agony. If this thing was meant to extract repentance or forgiveness, it wouldn’t take long, Cecilia was certain. She was frozen in place and in fear.

  Trapped.

  Numbed by pain.

  Trying to remain conscious in the stifling heat.

  Holding only a single thought.

  We’re going to die.

  She stood dazed and confused, in shock, staring through the cutouts for her eyes, pupils fixed and dilated at the gruesome scene unfolding before her powerlessly; the chapel awash in blood, sweat, tears, pus, and vomit. Bruised, battered, shamed, and cut, their insides draining slowly but surely out, like dirty oil from a cold car engine.

  “Help me,” Cecilia called out in vain.

  Lucy was shaken free from her trance by Cecilia’s wail and turned to the cabinet where she was imprisoned and saw it begin to shutter.

  Cecilia let out an awful scream as she pushed the door open, calling upon her last bit of strength and sanity, nails piercing both palms front to back.

  “My hands,” she moaned, sliding them off the spikes and dropping to her knees.

  They twitched and trembled in her lap, blood and sweat pooling in the center of each palm.

  Agnes crawled to CeCe and took her by the wrists, wiping the wounds over her face and hair, the gore drying into a horrible red mask on her face and caking her curls.

  She resumed her entreaties with even greater fervor, picking at her soiled bandages, slowly at first, and then tore at them, seeking any relief for the claustrophobia they were inflicting on her, like a prisoner trying to slip handcuffs. The wrappings fell to the floor, filling the room with the foul stench of decay.

  Agnes recited:

  “Cor meum tamquam cera liquescens in medio ventris mei.

  Ipsi vero consideraverunt et inspexerunt me.

  Concilium malignantium obsedit me.

  Sicut aqua effusus sum et dispersa sunt universa

  ossa mea factum.”3

  Lucy began to gag, choking on the odor. Unable to hold it back any longer, she purged, gushing a bile-filled, watery puke caused partially by the stink of rotting flesh and partially by the pain in her head. She crawled down the short aisle toward the altar to find an unstained space, dry heaving all the way.

  Finally, Lucy collapsed.

  Agnes continued to chant, offering a surreal narration to their torment.

  “Mei animam meam circumdederunt super me.”4

  “Lucy,” Cecilia moaned. “Get out of here. Find Sebastian.”

  Lucy heard, but instead walked toward the mirror that had vexed her earlier. She stared at her reflection, at her eyes, which appeared now to glow and made her dizzy once again. She fell headfirst into the glass. One by one, rough shards of mirror pierced her head. She did not move. She stood there and took it.

  Another.

  And another.

  Embedding themselves into her scalp until they formed a halo around her head. She looked at herself in the cracked mirror, bl
ood flowing from her wounds. The reflection in each shard was of her own eyes, looking back at her in the remnants of the cracked mirror.

  “Judge not, that you may not be judged,” Agnes whispered.

  Lucy reached for her ears.

  Agnes crawled toward the votive stand, gazing at the low light of the candle flame and stretched her hand out stiffly above it, like a curious child over a hot stove. She lowered it gradually, drops of Cecilia’s still-fresh blood dripping from her hand into the candle cup and sizzling, until it was perched near enough to the flame to hurt, her long hair near enough to ignite. As the frayed ends began to catch, the acrid smell of burning hair mixed with the rankness of the room.

  Through the haze she appeared to Lucy, who was now lying on a mirror bed made of shards, as a pathetic wraith, damned to infinitely repeat a ritual that might one day earn forgiveness for her. Agnes whispered:

  “Dinumeraverunt omnia ossa mea.”5

  Lucy mustered the strength to grab her heels and put them on to protect her feet from further injury caused by debris, and hobbled over to Agnes. Before she could grab her hand and hair away from the flame, Agnes turned and faced her. She held her hand up, palm facing Lucy, a silent sign to stop where she was.

  “You’re sick,” Lucy insisted, hoping to bully some sense into her. “This isn’t you.”

  “It is,” Agnes said. “It’s all of us.”

  Agnes looked right through her as if she wasn’t there. A thousand-yard stare to cover a matter of inches.

  The room was a split screen of pain and suffering, and Lucy didn’t know which way to turn, who to help first when she couldn’t even help herself. She understood how insanity could pounce on even the soundest and sharpest mind, which she always considered to be hers. The closeness of madness was overwhelming and keeping it at bay, a losing battle. Insanity beckoned. She kept telling herself deep breath, to put herself back in her body, but she couldn’t manage to take one.

  “Seeing is believing,” Agnes mocked and started to giggle, her bloodstained face and hands almost disappearing in the dimness, giving the impression of a headless, limbless torso floating in space. “How do I look?”