On the Third Day (19 page)

            Either course was equally daunting.  He laid out his clothes on the chair beside his bed, adding a belt and clean socks.  He set his alarm, turned, and stared at the computer.  The monitor blinked at him, having gone blank except for the screensaver.  It was an image of an old, gothic-style clock.  Lettered beneath it were his name, his date of birth, and beside that was the projected day of his death, courtesy of yet another Internet site.  He had twenty-eight years to straighten out a nearly equal number of wasted ones.  If the clock could be believed. 

            Norman walked over and pressed a key to erase the image of the clock.  He brought up the directory where he’d saved all of the video files from San Marcos.  He quickly highlighted them all and pressed delete.  He closed the folder and deleted it as well.  Then clicked the right mouse button over the little trash can on his desktop and chose ERASE.  This would overwrite the data several times and eliminate the possibility of it ever being restored.  Norman pressed the mouse button and turned to his bed.  He had four and a half hours to sleep.

            He set his alarm clock; turned over to face the opposite the death clock, closed his eyes, and tried to sleep.  It was going to be a hellishly long night.

~ Nineteen ~

            Father Thomas stood before a full-length mirror, his hands stretched to either side as Father Prescott helped him arrange his vestments.  The older priest had arrived before sunrise bearing strong coffee from the city, and Thomas, though surprised, found that he was very glad for the company.  His preparations for The Mass had been very solitary since coming to San Marcos, and he’d become accustomed to this, but for some reason, on this of all days, it was comforting to know that he wasn’t completely on his own.  He would be, soon enough, but for the moment he stood very still and allowed the other man to fuss over the preparations.

            They didn’t speak much, at first.  There was so much to say, and there were so many thoughts to fill their minds, that organizing it into actual conversation was an intimidating prospect.

            The heavy drapes were drawn wide.  Bright morning sunlight kissed the skyline and seeped into the room, catching the finery of Father Thomas’ robes.  He wore his best for Easter Mass, as always.  The garments had been carefully cleaned and prepared for this day.  Though they’d seen hard use the year before, they were none the worse for the experience, and as always at such times, Father Thomas felt a bit of awe that it was he who would wear those heavy, powerful robes.  It was his voice that would intone the benediction, and the blessings.  It was his face that would draw every eye on a day when they celebrated the most important event of Christian history.

            “You feel it, don’t you?” Father Prescott asked, smiling.  “Every time I prepare for Mass, something flows into me – something beyond my understanding.  It’s very powerful, and at the same time perhaps the most humbling of all experience.”

            Father Thomas nodded.  It was an accurate description, though the words fell short of the reality.  When he wore the vestments, he didn’t feel like Quentin Thomas.  He was a vessel, a representative of something much greater.  He knew this was as it should be, but at the same time the introspection it caused, the deep, conscious awareness of his own shortcomings, was frightening in its clarity.

            Father Prescott stepped around and scrutinized his efforts carefully.  Then he glanced up into Father Thomas’ pale, strained face.

            “Are you sure you want to go through with this, Quentin?  I know I told you the Vatican wanted it, and I would not stop it for Bishop Michaels.  For you, though, it’s a different matter.”

            Quentin smiled.

            “I appreciate the sentiment, Donovan, but you and I both know it is far too late now for turning back.  This is my life – my calling.  Those people out there depend on me from week to week, and I won’t let them down if it’s within my power to serve.  I won’t say that I’m not frightened, even a bit overwhelmed by the immensity of all of this, but I will see it through.

            “Besides,” he said, his smile growing wry, “many of them have come to witness a miracle.  Whether or not they will be disappointed in this is not for me to say, but it would be cruel of me to deny them their opportunity.  If nothing more miraculous than the Mass takes place, I will be content, and they will get on with their lives.  It’s a matter of closure.”

            “You aren’t expecting the miracle yourself, then?” Father Prescott asked, watching the younger man’s face. 

            “I’m not sure what I expect,” Father Thomas said.  “I’m not even certain that I understand what a miracle is, Donovan.  I’ve read about miracles all my life, wondrous things that brought peace and faith, and yet I never once stopped to think of the enormous pressure, or of the incredible fear of God, such an event could bring with it.

            “It certainly gives new meaning to the expression ‘put the fear of God into you.”

            Father Prescott laughed softly.

            “It does that, for a certainty,” he said.  “I don’t’ know what it is, but there is something in the air here, this room, this Cathedral.  There is something about today that is different, but I can’t define it clearly.  I’ve felt it before…”

            Father Thomas turned to study the older priest carefully.

            “I made a promise to you a while back that I never kept,” Donovan said at last.  “I promised that I would tell you the rest of the story of the words of Peter the Martyr, and to answer your question about that miracle.”

            Father Thomas said nothing.  He stood very still, expectant.  His eyes glittered and if Father Prescott had reached out a hand and laid it on Quentin’s arm at that moment, he would have felt a deep, invasive tremble.

            “Did you find your miracle, then?” Father Thomas asked.  His voice was barely above the level of a whisper, and there was such pain in the tone, such anguish and hunger that Donovan almost fell silent.

            Father Prescott walked across the room to a small table, just inside the window overlooking the ocean.  He gestured for Father Thomas to follow, and when they were both seated, he smiled thinly.

            “It’s best if I tell you the rest of the story in its entirety.  I think there’s time before you are called to Mass, and I think it’s important.”

            Father Thomas nodded.

            “Sometimes,” Father Prescott began, “I remember it so vividly it might have been yesterday.”

* * *

            The second night Father Prescott returned to the small statue of the martyr, Peter, he came later in the evening.  The villagers had given him his own cottage nearby, and Donovan hadn’t eaten since the previous night.  He hadn’t intended to fast, but his mind still whirled with conflicting emotion.  If he closed his eyes, he still saw the earth shift.  The letters formed, and he heard the soft sigh of those gathered.  He saw Father Fernando’s dark, sad eyes, and knew that the weight of that gaze lay on his shoulders, and not on faith, or any divine promise.

            Father Fernando, the villagers, the Vatican, all of them had sloughed off the burden of responsibility onto Donovan’s shoulders.  He had been exposed to the wonder of ‘the miracle,’ and now it was his job to contest it.  In the face of a thing that should have brought him great joy, he found he had only questions, doubts, and an inability to discern from his own cloudy emotions whether he wanted it to be true, or false, God or man, Reality, or dream

            The sun hadn’t fully set when he stepped onto the shadowed street, but it was low enough on the horizon that the short houses and storefronts hid it from his view.  The black and gray wash of night seeped over the street and down the walls of the houses to either side.  He caught flickers in the windows of those homes, and knew the bright flashes were eyes.  They watched him.  They had watched for him since the previous night, when he’d walked away from their miracle and locked himself away from the sun.

            Donovan avoided the eyes.  He didn’t meet their gaze because he knew what he would see.  They were curious.  They were hopeful.  They were hungry for answers they believed he could provide, as if his own proclamation on the subject of the phenomenon they lived with on a daily basis would somehow change the mystery of it, would wash away the doubts and the shadows.  Donovan knew that even if The Pope himself were to visit this place, kneel before the statue of the martyr and bless it with the full authority of the Holy See, it would change nothing.  God communes with man – not with men.  No two of them could ever truly share the experience he was about to revisit, and none among them could explain it -- unless it was a lie.

            Father Prescott searched the world for miracles, but he did not disillusion himself.  His purpose, in the eyes of the Church, was not to find miracles, but to dispute them.  He was a buffer zone between the Vatican and the magic of its history and the stark reality of a world populated with charlatans and fools of every stripe.  They didn’t expect him to find a miracle, and if he did find one they would be as likely to send others to investigate his findings as they were to bless the phenomena.  It was a thankless task, and so, he made it personal.

            The villagers fell into step behind him, far enough back that their voices were murmurs and whispers and their footsteps no more than a rhythmic rustle in the dust.  He knew they were there.  He felt them, and he wanted to turn to them, embrace them, and try to explain, but he had a purpose and place in all of this, and he could not afford to be distracted by what he would like, or what they expected.  He didn’t turn, because he knew they wouldn’t listen.  They were like partners in an all-too-familiar dance.

            The small shrine lay ahead, awash in bright moonlight.  Father Fernando was there ahead of him, standing off to the side, alone.  Any other night there would be dozens of the faithful kneeling in a tight semi-circle around the statue, but this night was different.  If they had come, they had been asked to leave.   The small square was so empty it had the aspect of a vacuum.  The shadows pulled back away from the gleaming moonlit stone of Peter’s statue.  The same white stone formed the walls of the buildings and glittering mica flickered on the dark bricks of the street.  The scene would have been idyllic under other circumstances, but this night it brought Donovan up short, one step away from entering the square.

            The eerie shadows leapt wildly, and he wondered if it was the villagers flitting about just beyond his sight, trying to see what he would do and hear what he had to say without getting close enough to influence him.  What if he was about to proclaim the miracle real and one of them did, or said the wrong thing?  Better to remain in hiding and hear the proclamation after the fact.  Better to be justified in one’s absence than reviled while present.  Better not to get too close to a God they didn’t understand, if they could get this stranger – this Priest – to make the journey for them and to tell them what to believe.

            Father Fernando stood beside the statue.  He didn’t see Donovan, or if he did, he made no sign of it.  He stood in front of the martyr and stared at the ground, as he must have done a thousand nights before.  He watched for the miracle that had burrowed itself into the soil of his village to show itself, or be damned.  There was no in between.  If there was an answer beyond the miraculous (or, rather, falling short of it) he wanted to be the first to catch it.  He knew that Father Prescott was trained to search out the truth in such matters, but it did not change his inability to understand how one man’s eyes could be valued above those of another – or of hundreds of others.

            Father Prescott stepped into the square and entered another world.  The air was thick, so damp it was like breathing liquid.  All of the stone surfaces, white a moment before, glowed brightly.  Father Fernando’s long, thick hair gleamed like a helmet of metal, and his bowed figure was so like images of the Apostles Donovan had seen painted and carved in wood and stone that he nearly cried out.  Each step was more difficult than the last, but he forced his way forward.

            He fell to his knees at the base of the statue.  It was so bright, so brilliantly lit, that he was half-blind from the glare.  There was a strange buzzing in his ears.  In the back of that sound voices danced, but he could make out neither their words nor their rhythms.

            The ground at the martyr’s feet shifted.  The ground beneath his knees shifted as well, the sucking, terrifying sensation was the same as he’d felt, standing in the surf on a beach with the sand drawn from beneath him, grain by grain, stealing his foundation.

            Donovan tried to raise his head and examine the statue, but he could not.  A weight rested firmly at the back of his neck and held him still.  Had Father Fernando grabbed him?  Had others come up from behind to force him to stare and examine their miracle?  He felt no fingers gripping his flesh.  He scanned the periphery of his sight frantically, but there were no shadows.   He heard a rush of sound.  It might have been the shifting earth.  It might have been some odd wind that rose and roared past his ears.  The hairs on his neck prickled, but his hair did not seem caught in any breeze.

            The earth before him grew liquid.  Vertigo hit hard, and he gasped, but there was no loss of balance.  Though the ground no longer felt solid, Donovan didn’t fall forward – nor could he pull back, or look away.  Patterns whirled in the soil, winding in and around one another, and he fought frantically to sort them in his mind.  They writhed like serpents, and then flowed.  There was no other way to describe the motion.  It began in the center of an oblong section of ground roughly the width of the statue’s base, spiraled out, and drew dark lines against a darker background.  The edges dropped, as if beveled; the backwash drained back and away leaving only the letters of four simple words outlined brilliantly.  There was no color, and yet, Donovan knew the letters were bright, blood red.