On the Third Day (26 page)

            He saw how the flesh tore around the nails.  He saw the stains on skin and wood where blood had flowed, coagulated, and finally dried.  Insects buzzed about the hilltop, though none came near Donovan.  Nothing here touched him but the wind.

            Father Fernando did not move, but from the bright intensity of his stare, Donovan knew the man was not dead.  The two had connected at the moment Donovan raised his head, and now he had the sensation that Father Fernando had something to tell him.  There seemed to be something the other man wanted him to know, or to see, but speech was impossible, and with his arms stretched up and back impossibly, pounded to the cross and covered in buzzing insects, he could find no way to articulate his thoughts.

            Donovan studied the priest’s expression, tried to read the emotion in his eyes, but it was hopeless.  All he felt was the vague notion he was missing something, that there was a vital, vastly important detail he’d overlooked, and that Father Fernando had not, but he could find no way to extract the information from their interaction.  His senses awakened slowly, and the scents and sounds of the moment filtered in, driving his already scattered thoughts apart.

            The flies and gnats, which moments before had been only a pulsing, rippling mass, came to droning life.  He heard the hum of wings, the buzz of their flight, and more.  High overhead he heard the sharp cry of a buzzard, but he did not look up.  He concentrated, trying to fathom the meaning in Father Fernando’s eyes, and failing.

            Donovan turned to the center cross.  He saw no sense in twisting past it this time.  If he glanced up at the third cross, he was fairly certain he’d find another face form his past.  The Bishop?  The Cardinal?  Gladys Multinerry, her overweight form drawing down hard on the long nails and ready to tear free? He pivoted and brought his gaze even with that of the man hanging from the second cross.  The angle of the head, the deep, sorrowful cast of the eyes – every angle and every nuance screamed to him that he was viewing a living rendition of the bas-relief from the Cathedral.  He could almost believe it was a carved figure, nailed to the cross to hold it upright, but not living.  Not real.  Almost.

            If it hadn’t been for Father Thomas’ eyes, he might have believed it.   The young priest stared at him in such abject need, such pain and anguish, that Donovan cried out.  The moment their gazes met, he screamed.  The emotion was too deep, and he had no answers.  For all his years and all his studies, he did not know what was happening to them, what might happen when it was done, where they might be – or who.  Father Thomas managed what Father Fernando had not.  He moved his lips, very slowly.  They were dry, the skin chapped and cracked.  Donovan strained, hoping to catch a word, or a sound.  There was nothing.  Whatever Father Thomas released was released into the air. 

            Blood streamed from his wounds, and on his brown sat the shadow wreath Donovan had seen in the cathedral.  It had not simply been wound around the head, but appeared to be pressed firmly into the young priest’s scalp.   Donovan took a step forward.  He wanted to cut Father Thomas down.  He wanted to mop away the blood from the younger man’s eyes, and to clean that pleading, haunted face. 

            Father Thomas moved the fingers of his hand.  He curled them, tried to clench them around the mail that had been slammed through his wrist, and failed.  The young priest closed his eyes for a long moment, and Donovan thought he had passed on, but the eyes flickered open once again.  Father Thomas didn’t meet Donovan’s gaze this time.  He shifted his gaze to the side, toward the cross on the left, and stared. 

            Donovan followed that gaze.  He turned his head slowly, and everything slowed.  The sound of the insects buzzing about Father Fernando’s ruined body stretched into surreal, elongated tones.  The whites of Father Thomas’ eyes as he turned his head left white trails in the air.  The air felt cool and damp on his cheek, as though he had suddenly been coated in sweat, or just realized that he was already coated.  He caught a glimpse of one of the buzzards, motionless against the deep red of the dying sun.

            Then the cross came into view.  It was empty.  No one hung from the crossbar. The wood was dark, but it was shadows that stained it, and not blood.  Confused, Donovan raised his gaze higher.  He traced each crossbeam, found nothing, and returned to the center post.   In that moment he saw, and he understood.

            Perched precariously atop the center beam, the statue of Peter, the martyr, stood alone.  Crumbling dirt fell away from the base, as if it had only recently been plucked free of the earth that held it.  The wind picked up suddenly, and it wobbled.  The motion was a small one, almost indiscernible, but Donovan knew it was real.  The statue tilted ever so slightly, then dropped back into place, its balance uncertain.  Donovan held his breath.

            The slow-motion moment was blasted by a cry from above.  The powerful beating of wings descending dragged Donovan’s attention from the statue.  He glanced up, took half a step back, and cried out.  A huge buzzard, wings spread wide and talons outstretched, descended on the third cross at dizzying speed.  It seemed as large as a man, larger, growing each second and dropping at impossible speed. 

            At the last second the creature pulled out of its dive.  The huge wings unfurled and beat at the air.  The wind from this buffeted the ground, sent dust devils darting in all directions at once, and drove Donovan back half a step before he dug in and held his ground.  He ignored the bird, which pulled back and soared away toward the city in the distance.  He ignored Father Thomas and his pained, entreating gaze.  He ignored Father Fernando’s silent, motionless body and torn, bloody flesh.

            The statue toppled.  It wobbled once, spun so that the face of Stephen, captured forever in stone, glared down at Donovan for an infinite instant of perfect clarity.  Then it tumbled off and down, spinning in lazy circles, end-over-end.  Donovan moved.

            He took a step forward, then another, and launched himself forward.  He didn’t know what he meant to do, didn’t know what he thought would happen when the heavy statue struck the ground if he put himself in the way.  He thought of nothing but stopping that impact, dulling it, forcing it back from this reality, whatever it might be.   He saw the statue at the base of the cross in his mind’s eye, upright and intact, placed firmly in the dirt and patted into place by his own hand.

            Before he could take the third step, his toe caught on something, and he pitched forward.  He glanced frantically down to see what it was, and to try and drag free, and then he screamed.  His foot was wedged firmly into the eye-socket of a skull.  It was a huge skull, too large to be a man, but perfectly formed.  He fell, arms wind milling, unable even to break his fall.

            The statue fell as well.  It struck, just out of reach of his groping fingers.  The point of impact was a flat slab of stone. The statue burst.  It was not a cracking, as he had expected.  No chunk of stone broke free, nor did the head fall free of the body of the icon.  It shattered to powder, spraying his face and hair and hands with fine dust, sending glittering shards into the air until nothing but a white cloud filled Donovan’s vision.  He struck the ground, but it was soft, softer than it could possibly be.  He closed his hands on open air, closed his eyes on his pain.

            The shattering explosion of stone faded to an echo.  The echo found the rhythm of his blood, his pulse, beating with his heart.  It found the voice of a thousand men and women and it whispered to him as the dust settled over him – buried him – and gently caressed his skin.

            “I believe in God.”

~ Twenty-Six ~

            Father Prescott stood behind the communion rail, just in front of the altar.  He did not look up at Father Thomas, but instead stared out over the cathedral.  Like great serpents, the pews emptied into the aisles.  There were no quick movements.  The myriad bodies in their flashy clothes and brightly colored hats flowed like a river of humanity.

            Donovan glanced down.  In his hand he held a round flat loaf.  He stared at it and knew what it was.  No wafers today.  Unleavened bread.  He wondered briefly if he’d carried it back from that other place – if he’d ever left this place – and just what he would do with what he held, and with what he knew.

            Some of his questions were quick to be answered.  The congregation surged forward.  They didn’t hesitate, but came to the small, upholstered step before the rail, knelt, and waited to receive the communion.   They didn’t meet his gaze; they stared instead at a point above and beyond Donovan’s shoulder.  He told himself that Father Thomas stood, as he had the last time Donovan had seen him, near the front of the altar with his hands out to his sides.  The congregation, then, must be staring at the huge crucified image of Christ.

            He caught sight of the Bishop’s robes in the crowd, not heading for the exit, and not surrounded by his guards, but pressing forward with the others, lined up and ready to receive the body and the blood.  Hector Clearwater’s thin, aquiline features slipped in and out of sight near the middle of the congregation.  Donovan couldn’t see if the man still had the young assistant at his side, but knew that it didn’t matter.  Whatever the two had been planning, they had been derailed by the power of the moment and dropped into line with those who’d already believed.

            The first row of parishioners knelt before the railing of the altar.  Centermost he saw Gladys Multinerry.  Her graying hair had spread out about her rounded face like a nimbus of silver.  At her side, her son Norman knelt.  The young man’s eyes were closed, and he knelt in the blood with his clean suit, oblivious and filled with obvious rapture.

Gladys’ gaze never wavered.  She knelt, her lips slightly parted to receive the host, and waited.

            Father Prescott broke a bit of the bread from the loaf.  He did not think about what he did, merely acted, and reacted, to the moment.  He stood in a growing pool of red.  When he moved his feet, they stuck to the floor, and the scent was rich and overpowering, metallic and pungent.  He reached behind himself and stroked the edge of the altar with the loaf.  Without glancing down at it, he stepped forward to stand before Gladys, and pressed the loaf between her lips.  She took a small bite, lowered her eyes for a moment, and whispered something Donovan couldn’t hear.

            “The body and blood of Christ,” Donovan whispered.  “Go with his blessing.”

            Gladys rose then, and Donovan started down the line.  He stopped and repeated his blessing to each, knowing the words were not exactly what he’d been taught, but feeling somehow that they were right, that there was nothing else he could have said, even had it occurred to him.  The faces blurred, one into the next, each staring above and beyond him in rapt concentration.

            Those who received the communion turned and peeled off to the side.  They disappeared back up the aisle without a glance over their shoulders, and though he didn’t look up to verify it, Father Prescott believed they were exiting the church.  He wondered what the brilliant sunlight of the world beyond those doors would do – whether they would awaken and start screaming, or just quietly wander off.  Would they drive home to their everyday lives as if it were just another Sunday, or was there more?

            It was all too hazy, too vague and uncertain.  A part of Donovan knew he should not be standing calmly dispensing communion with all that had happened, and all that was potentially happening behind him.  There was no way he could give a valid report to Rome, no way he could prove he hadn’t been drugged and hallucinated the entire thing.  His actions had been irrational, and his memory of the services was vague, detached, and littered with illusory images and remnants of visions.

            And still he couldn’t turn.  He was halfway through the crowd, and they showed no sign of panic.  They were staring at what he dared not see, and all he could do was to trust that, if the sight were horrible beyond measure, at least one of them would break from their reverie to say something, or to cry out.  That was what his mind told him, repeating the observation over and over like a mantra.

            Bishop Michaels came forward and knelt at the rail.  He stared, as the others stared, but when Donovan stepped up before him, the older priest blinked, turned to him, and smiled.  It was a child-like smile, an expression filled with wonder, bright and glowing in a way Donovan would never have attributed to the man.

            Donovan brought the loaf to the Bishop’s lips, and the man took a bite, and then lowered his head in prayer.  Crossing himself slowly, Michaels stood and stared in awe over Donovan’s shoulder.  He trembled, as if fighting some tremendous inner struggle, and at last he managed to roll words across his quivering lips.

            “I’m sorry, brother,” he whispered.  “I am so sorry.”

            He turned then without an explanation and followed the others as they flowed out toward the doors and the parking lot and the world.  Moments later his face faded from Donovan’s memory.  The others he offered the loaf to seemed to be a mixture of the congregation, the villagers, and the jungle congregation of Father Gonzalez.  One young man looked like Father Morrigan, but when Donovan blinked the face shifted once more to one he’d never known.  They flowed past, and out, and though it seemed an eternity, it was probably no more than a few moments before the last of them rose, turned, and trailed off after the crowd. 

Alone once more, Donovan stood.  He still held the remnant of the loaf, and he absently tore off a small piece.  The light of the day had waned.  He didn’t know if it were preparing to storm, or if the service could actually have lasted into the evening hour.  Maybe the sun had been dimmed out of respect.  He brought the bit of unleavened bread to his lips and pressed it to his tongue.  His fingers, and the loaf, were sticky with the blood.  It should have thickened and begun to dry, but it had not.  He closed his mouth and felt the soft mass melt against his tongue.  In moments he swallowed and closed his eyes and crossed himself.