The Revelation of Gabriel Adam (2 page)

Waiting to strike
, he thought and pulled his jacket tight. Though the sleeping bell looked docile enough, the memory of the first time he got caught on the tower was still fresh in his mind. It took him two days to get over the migraine, and he heard the cursed thing pounding in his head for a week after that.

Wooden beams in the cathedral’s belfry creaked as the December wind cut through the observation deck of the east tower. Gabe adjusted the range of his Nikon ED50 telescope and blew into his gloves for warmth as he looked out over New York City.

“Gabe? Downstairs. Now, please.”

His father’s voice, layered in an English accent, echoed through the marble and granite walls of the cathedral until it escaped through the hatch under the belfry. Gabe wanted to slam it closed. For weeks they’d lived at their temporary home in the cathedral’s residence, and yet the man still shouted at the top of his lungs whenever some stupid chore went neglected.

He knows where I am. He can come and get me if it’s so important
.

On the eyepiece of the telescope, snowflakes no bigger than grains of sand accumulated around the rubber guard. He blew them off and wiped the glass with the soft palm of his glove, careful not to scratch the lens.

“Gabriel Adam,” his father shouted again.

Gabe shook his head and laughed.
Sgt Adam reporting for duty
, he thought. There was plenty to be done inside the cathedral. Christmas decorations of every kind filled the church wall to wall. They needed to be boxed and stored. One of the least appealing ways to spend an afternoon, especially when that afternoon fell on a holiday. He thought about his latest report card—perfect marks.

“Don’t I deserve a little time off?” he asked the belfry hatch.

Transferring schools during his senior year had been hard enough. Nobody wanted to get to know the new kid with high school nearing its end. And nobody was studying, either. Most of his class had decided to end the year on whatever achievements they’d already earned, their spots already promised at universities.

Gabe would have, too, had his transcript not resembled a jigsaw puzzle. He’d lost count of the number of schools he’d attended over the years as he chased his father’s career around the country from church to church. Because of that, universities weren’t exactly beating down his door.

He looked out over the city—at the streets full of busy people—and thought of the things he might want to be in life. Nothing out of the ordinary, really. Become a doctor, perhaps. Or a lawyer. Something that would allow him to take root somewhere and build a life that didn’t involve traipsing across the United States. All these dreams began with the same first step—get into a good school. One with dorms and a rich student life. Freedom, girls, and parties—the whole experience. Achieving that meant Scholarship, because not getting a scholarship meant Student Loans. And student loans meant Local Community College, or in his mind, the Living with Dad School of Suck.

While in New York City, he’d made some headway with the local schools. New York University in particular, thanks to a recommendation letter from Professor John Carlyle, an old friend of his father who lived in Britain. Gabe had never met him but figured him for one of those bookish pipe-and-jacket types, smoking behind a desk at his prestigious English university. Not that it mattered. He didn’t care if the man thought he was the Queen of England, so long as he had influence over the NYU admissions office.

A gust of wind blew a strand of black hair into his eyes and brought him back to the present. He combed it with his fingers in a futile attempt to tame the mop and then readjusted the focus of the Nikon. The tower served as the ideal vantage point to look for New York’s rarest animal, the red-tailed hawk. According to his field guide, Central Park and the surrounding buildings were the birds’ adopted home.

The park.
What little he could see through the buildings ahead looked enormous, stretching clear across the city.

A flash of brown streaking against the snow-dusted trees caught his eye. He grabbed the viewfinder and pointed the telescope across the park, focusing in on the target. Gabe dared not breathe. There it was—a red-tailed hawk circling just above the canopy. With a sudden dive, it disappeared into the park.

Gabe tried to hold back his excitement so he could steady the shaking viewfinder and scan the telescope across the tree line.

After a moment, the hawk soared into the sky and in its talons, something half its size with a wire tail dangling below.

A rat
, he realized and shuddered.
A really big rat
.

The alarm on his digital watch chirped three times, beginning a countdown on its timer.
Careless
, Gabe cursed
.
For the moment, the bell was quiet, but it wouldn’t be for long.

He moved quickly, hoping to avoid another migraine. A nylon bag for the telescope lay open with its accessory containers strewn across the tower floor. One of a thousand lectures from his father about the importance of tidiness came to mind.

He hated it when his father was right.

As seconds ticked away, Gabe picked up all the loose items and shoved them into pouches on the bag. He then removed the telescope from its tripod and broke it down, but the thickness of the gloves made the effort clumsy. With some struggle, he managed to get it into its sheath.

Gabe checked his watch again.
Just over a minute.

The eyepiece required special attention. He fumbled with the unzipped end of the bag, trying to separate the telescope viewfinder with his cumbersome gloves. Finally, the piece unscrewed. He reached for its small, padded holder but was stopped cold by the sound of glass on concrete. The lens bounced once on its edge, then rolled across the floor like a dropped coin, gaining momentum toward a small drain that allowed rainwater to flow onto the roof below—its opening just big enough to swallow one very expensive part of the Nikon.

Gabe dove at the piece and caught it right before it disappeared. Relief then turned to panic as another sound, this one similar to a piano wire snapping, came from the yoke above the bell’s crown. Accumulated snow and ice fell from the crown, disappearing through the open hatch below. Noises from the clinking gears in the belfry sung in rhythm as cords and cables pulled tight.

The sleeping giant had awakened.

Gabe ripped a glove off with his teeth and crammed the eyepiece into its proper container. With the shoulder strap of the gear bag cinched tight to his body, he ran to the hatch and squeezed through, closing it behind him. He began to climb down the ladder, careful not to slip on the icy rungs.

As the digital timer on his watch beeped wildly, the tower came alive with a chorus of moving arms and clinking levers. Cables traveled through the innards of the giant machine, louder and louder until finally there was only one nearly inaudible sound: the hush of a five-ton metal bell swinging through the air.

He hooked his arms through the rungs and held tight, his teeth still clenched on the glove. The clapper punched the lip of the bell’s mouth and sent a sonic boom echoing down the chasm of the tower with a concussion that nearly shook him to the ground.

It struck again. Ice fell from the slits above. With every strike, his brain swelled and contracted. An acute pain pulsed from the back of his skull, creeping forward through his head.

Finally, the assault stopped, though phantom bells still rang in his ears. Gabe opened his eyes to a swirl of vertigo. His stomach turned, a sickness spreading through his body. He loosened his grip on the ladder and slowly made his way to the floor.

According to the bell, the time was four o’clock. His head thumped like the inside of a drum. While the room spun, a feeling of nausea grew in his gut. Gabe braced against the wall, hoping he wouldn’t fall over. A sharpening pain at the back of his skull began in tiny bursts. Being out of commission for another two days with an unbearable migraine was not an experience he wished to revisit. Deep breaths helped steady the sick feeling, but he feared the damage was done.

From his pocket he pulled out a pill the size of a grape and tossed it into his mouth. He hesitated, reluctant, and then bit down, crunching it open. The bitter taste soured on his tongue, and he gagged, fighting the chalky substance down his throat.

With any luck, the medication would force the migraine into retreat.

When the room stopped spinning, he set off for the sanctuary, hoping his father’s lecture would be more tolerable than the headache.

CHAPTER THREE

The interior of the cathedral loomed with a design that paid homage to gothic masonry used in Europe’s medieval churches. At least, that’s what Gabe’s father had told him in their first days at the church. Walls built from large block stone descended from vaulted ceilings to meet hardwood floors. Antique light fixtures kept the hallways lit, though their illumination provided little warmth to make the décor feel hospitable. Silver tinsel and red holiday bows adorned their iron housings but only looked desperate amongst the gloom.

A quick succession of hallways led to the dimly lit foyer and the back entrance to the sanctuary used by staff. The effect of the lighting suggested that a certain degree of seriousness was required to enter. Gabe often teased his dad that his sermons were solemn enough. “Mood lighting isn’t necessary,” he’d say.

He stood in front of the closed door to the sanctuary, reluctant to enter. With every step on the hardwood, the loud patter of his shoes had announced his arrival. His father had undoubtedly used the time to strategize another lecture on responsibility.

Gabe took a breath and opened the door.

His father, Joseph, stood atop a stepladder, taking down a string of tinsel draped over a large suspended gold cross that hung above the pulpit. He wore a black Anglican clerical shirt with a white neckband and blue jeans, awkwardly mismatched, in Gabe’s opinion, with hospital-white sneakers. Thick hair cascaded around a thin face. Though he was fifty-two, there was hardly any indication of gray.

“I hope it isn’t too inconvenient for you to join us,” his father said in a Manchester accent diluted by his years of living in America. He finished coiling the roll of tinsel and handed it down to his intern, Richard, who stretched up like a baby bird in a nest waiting to be fed by its mother.

“Inconvenient?” Gabe said. “It’s Christmas break. The operative word there being
break
.”

Richard packed the tinsel into the box below the ladder. His scowl suggested he was disappointed by Gabe’s intrusion. Richard came from a nearby school of divinity to learn the practicalities of the seminary and help out with odd jobs over the holiday. Gabe had decided that he seemed nice enough, but they had little in common. Richard always wanted to engage in theological discussions, which Gabe found to be a complete bore. After countless attempts at these conversations, Richard had begun to act as though Gabe were a pest, interfering with time spent with Gabe’s father.

On the plus side, the intern managed to divide his father’s attention, a benefit during times of housecleaning and other officially boring cathedral business. For that, Gabe was thankful, though he couldn’t see a way out of tonight’s project.

Countless bows, tinsel, and poinsettias decorated the sanctuary. Some simple math told him getting everything down and stowed could take all night, but he resisted the instinct to debate his father about evening plans. He walked past rows of wooden pews and plopped down on the last one closest to the stage, usually reserved for deacons.

“By the way, if you keep screaming like a banshee you’re going to blow it for Sunday service. You’ll lose your voice, and,
heaven forbid
, souls might be lost,” Gabe said with a laugh. “You knew where I was. All you had to do was come to the tower.” He motioned to Richard. “Or send him. I’m only up there, like, every day after school.”

His father furrowed his brow, unaffected by Gabe’s attempt at charm.

Richard placed a ribbon into the cardboard box and bowed out of the conversation, as he did every time a confrontation was about to occur. “I’ll go see if we have any extra boxes in the back, Father,” he said.

The way he said “Father” always made Gabe cringe. It was almost like a challenge, as if he was trying to stake claim to the word.

“I accept that you are prone to being messy and unorganized, Gabe. Your room is a testament to that. But you live
here
, too,” his father said and pointed to the cathedral’s painted ceiling. “You can help with managing the common areas as well, especially when we’re shorthanded for the holiday. I need your participation, not your petulance or wit. Would you care for another apology for my endless dedication to making your life miserable, or would you for once act like an adult and perhaps accept that you may have to make some sacrifices just a few months longer while my profession provides food for your table and a roof over your head?”

The guilt card.
It worked every time. “Fine. Sorry.” Gabe found a box and removed a red bow from the pew. Thoughts turned to outstanding university admission letters. “Did the mail run today?”