The Jealous God

by Brendan Carroll

  Omar drew a sharp breath at the sight of her face. Lucio sighed and prepared to lower the lid, but Omar held out his hand for the light. Lucio frowned, but handed over the flashlight. Omar played the light over her face again and looked as if he might throw himself into the coffin with her. He ran the light down the length of her body, and then dropped the light inside the casket. What happened next was very close to the worst thing Lucio had ever witnessed.

  Omar shouted something about demons and angels in Arabic and stumbled backwards across the other monuments behind him. Lucio caught the weight of the lower half of the lid and reached in for the light. He shined the light toward her feet and saw why the Prophet was behind him screaming incoherently as the others rushed forward to lay hold of him. He heard the shouts and screams and the grating crashes of stone against stone as Omar struggled with his companions. It all seemed surreal, muffled, detached from reality. Lucio lowered the lids and fastened them very deliberately before turning around slowly. Simon and Lavon were dragging Omar through the gate, trying to calm him, but he was beyond hysterical.

  The rest of the company stood staring at him, wide-eyed.

  “Signor Carlotti!” Lucio called as he stepped forward reluctantly and reached into his pocket. He pulled out a small bag full of gold pieces and stuffed them in the old man’s hands. “Take these men into town and buy them supper, drinks, whatever. Take this key! My room at the inn. Stay there until I come for you tomorrow!”

  “You cannot kick me out of my house!” the old man protested and the workers mumbled in Italian behind him, crossing themselves quickly.

  “There will be compensation.” Lucio shoved him along toward the gate. “Now go!”

  “I will not go, sir!” Burl stood his ground. “What is going on here? What is wrong with the woman?”

  Lucio drew his golden dagger from his belt and grabbed the old man’s shoulder, shoving the blade against his throat.

  “Listen very carefully, old man. If you do not do exactly as I say, you will find yourself in the catacombs tonight and your friends will go with you. Do you understand me, signor?” he spoke in a low voice and kept the knife out of sight of the others. He let go of the old man and spoke to the men in their own dialect, speaking of death, vampires, the afterlife, as well as, the defunct mafioso that once plagued the island. The men crossed themselves again and again, then grabbed hold of the old man and dragged him away forcefully.

  Burl no longer protested, but went quickly with the villagers.

  “Tomorrow, I will come for you.” Lucio called after him. “If you go to the policia, I will come for you the next day. Do you understand?”

  “I understand,” Burl answered him without looking back.

  The Knight of the Holy City stood by the gate as the local men filed out. They could still hear Omar wailing and crying from the direction of the garden.

  When they were gone out of sight, Lucio collapsed against one of the other tombs, and Christopher came to help him.

  “What is wrong, Brother?” Christopher whispered him as he helped him up again. He really did not want to know, but time was short.

  “Santa Maria!” Lucio crossed himself. “Come and witness for yourself. I don’t know if I can bear it alone.”

  Christopher approached the coffin, and Lucio unfastened the lower lid again.

  “I’ll hold the light. Prepare yourself, Brother and pray to God to save us all.”

  Christopher took a deep breath and then raised the lid. Lucio shined the light on Ruth’s legs. And there in the bluish glare of the flashlight, was the body of full term baby, tangled in the folds of her funeral gown. Dead and withered. Most horrid was the sight of the cloth entangled in the tiny brown hands and the tiny, open mouth. It had been alive for some time before dying in the grave.

  “Great God in Heaven!” Christopher shouted and dropped the lid, almost repeating Omar’s movements as he stumbled away from the tomb.

  Lucio came now to help him.

  “What does it mean?” Christopher asked him as he choked and gagged and tried to control himself.

  “You know of the skull of Sidon? The legend?” Lucio’s face was only inches from his.

  Christopher shook his head slowly. He had never witnessed this side of the Italian’s nature. He had seen him happy, sad, angry, belligerent, drunk, thoughtful, arrogant, but never terrified.

  “The baby was born in the grave after the mother had died,” Lucio said shortly and shoved him away. His dark eyes were wide in the dim light of the cemetery. He wiped at the cold sweat on his forehead and blinked at the younger Knight rapidly. Christopher could hear his own heartbeat and the breathing of the Golden Eagle. Much too loud in his ears.

  “What’s wrong? What’s the matter?” Lavon’s soft French accent wafted through the air to them. He still stood frozen by the gate, not having moved, since the commotion began.

  “Great God in Heaven,” Christopher repeated, and pressed his hands over his eyes. “What do we do now?”

  “We can’t leave it here,” Lucio told him.

  “We can’t take it with us!” Christopher shouted at him. “Are you crazy?!”

  “What if it has another of the crystal skulls inside it?” Lucio grabbed his shoulders and shook him slightly. “We can’t leave it here!”

  Christopher nodded as Lavon finally joined them in the close darkness.

  “Did I hear you correctly?” the French Knight’s voice was barely a whisper.

  “We have to take it with us.” Lucio turned on Lavon and took him by the shoulders as he had done Christopher. “We can’t leave it. You know what it is, Lavon. You know. You can feel it.”

  The golden-eyed Knight nodded his head rapidly. Like Lucio, he was sweating profusely in the cool night air.

  “How can we do that?” Christopher moaned and looked up at the cloudy sky. The dark, ragged wisps looked like eerie ghosts shrouding and then revealing, the light of the waning crescent moon.

  “We’ll find a way,” Lucio said as he closed and locked the coffin again. “We have to.”

  The Italian started back toward the house and Christopher stumbled after him with Lavon closely behind him. They could still hear Omar's pitiful cries drifting on the night air. Christopher doubted if they would ever make it out of Sicily without being arrested.

  Upon reaching the house, they found Simon and Curtis struggling to hold Omar on a small divan on the rear porch. Lucio took Lavon and went through the house, making sure he had gotten his message across to the old man while Christopher went to assist the priest with Omar. He hoped against hope, Burl would not send the police and have them arrested. The state of his mind, at the moment, would have certainly been conducive to carrying out the promise, he had made to Ruth’s last remaining relative. He did not think the bone-pickers would say anything, especially, if Burl used some of the gold to buy them a good supper and a few bottles of wine. Their round eyes, pale faces, and shabby clothes told a story of fright, superstition, and a basic need for sustenance, wherever they might find it. Lucio had added to their fears by telling them the remains of the ancient mafia dons who had once ruled this island were buried in the crypts, and their ghosts were present in the cemetery, demanding revenge, etceteras, while demons and angels fought over their souls. Hogwash, but the effect had been quite successful.

  The war may not have changed the outward appearance of the island, but the people were, none-the-less, suffering economically like the rest of the world. Burl’s comments on his lack of money also lent a good possibility he would do nothing as long as there remained the possibility Ruth might still yet contribute something to the upkeep of the household. He found the house vacated, and the ancient truck in which the workers had arrived was gone.

  Omar was still fighting with Simon and Curtis, and even making some headway against Christopher when they returned to the open-air porch at the rear of the small villa. Where he was going or what he meant to do was beyond comprehension as he seemed to be s
peaking in a variety of languages all tangled together. Lucio pushed his way between Lavon and Simon and picked the Prophet up off the couch, tossing him roughly onto the flagstones. This new treatment gave Omar something else to think about when his head bounced off a colorful crockery pot full of flowers.

  Lucio did not give him time to recover before he had him up again, shoving him toward the garden. Omar tried to break away from the Italian, but Lucio spun on him and slapped his face, knocking him to the ground again, leaving the imprint of his Templar ring on his cheek; and this time, he fell headfirst into a small fountain, soaking his head in the water. Lucio had him up again and then down amidst another flowerbed. Omar managed to get up once more, but he was moving slower, now and he had stopped shouting and screaming. He lowered his head and charged Lucio, even though, Simon was still trying to hold him. The Italian sidestepped the clumsy charge, and Omar dragged the healer with him into a bench, set under an arbor. The bench, the arbor and the two men ended up in a tangled mass at the foot of a huge fig tree. Christopher and Lavon waded into the mess and dragged them out again.

  Lucio righted the bench and they set Omar down on it forcefully. He didn’t really want to beat on the Prophet, but he knew he had to strike while the man was still hysterical, or else, Omar might have simply turned him into a toad.

  “Now, my brother!” Lucio said and leaned into his face. “Now, we have that out of the way, we have to decide what we are going to do!”

  Omar looked up at the Knight of the Golden Eagle, blinking as a trickle of blood flowed into his left eye.

  “Lucio.” Simon caught his arm. “What is it? What has happened?”

  Lucio did not take his eyes off the Prophet.

  “We have a serious problem here, Brother. Omar is going to have to use his influence or whatever is left of it to get us out of here. If he wants to go crazy, he will have to wait until we reach Geneva, and then, we can leave him there in the hospital. In the meantime, he has an obligation to this Order he will fulfill, or else we will not be leaving this island.”

  “What can we do?” Omar asked in a low voice. “What is left to do?”

  “You can have her body transferred to Geneva. Sealed coffin. We will escort it personally. Vandalism as the excuse. You will give the police a story they will believe. You will put it in their minds. You will show them what is not there and not show them what is when they send an investigator. He will verify your allegations and make the arrangements for us. I know you have the power to do this, Brother. We will travel with the body all the way to Switzerland. There we will meet with the Master and allow him to decide what is to be done.” Lucio told him.

  “But I promised…”

  “Promises be damned, man!” Lucio growled roughly and pulled him up again. “Ruth never expected this. We will take her to St. Patrick’s and give her a Templar burial. She is as much one of us as any. This little man will not care, and I can tell you, Ruth does not give a damn either. And I will tell you something else. If she were my wife, I would not subject her body to the degradation of this disgusting practice of bone-picking. Do you want me to tell you how it’s done?”

  “No!” Omar spoke up. He seemed to be recovering somewhat. “I do not want to hear it!”

  “Good. Now come into the house and get cleaned up. In the morning, we will make our reports to the local authorities. It will not be easy, and you will be the one who will have to make the proper papers and pay the proper… fines. We will also have to pay off the bone-pickers and Burl Carlotti as well, or else, we may all be arrested and detained here indefinitely.” Lucio helped him up, and he walked toward the door on Curtis’ arm with Lavon and Christopher close behind him.

  Simon hung back by the door, waiting for an explanation.

  “You remember what Montague found in the prophecies of Nostradamus, Brother?” Lucio asked him in the semi-darkness.

  “Montague found many things in the prophecies,” Simon shrugged.

  “Montague found a passage said the great evil would issue from someone in the east. Someone he named as Adalune Caitiff. You remember this? Montague was convinced Omar would be the anti-Christ, the son of Adalune Kadif.”

  “Yes, I remember that, and we believed it to be true, as well, for a long time.” Simon nodded. “But Omar is not the anti-Christ, Brother.”

  “I know that. But you know the ancient Kaballistic practice of Gematria?”

  “Yes, but what does this have to do with Ruth?” he asked slowly.

  “Nothing to do with Ruth, but everything to do with her son, Bari. Bari Caleb, who calls himself Joel Isaac Grenoble. If you apply a form of Gematria to his name, you will find the number of the Beast: 666. Joel Isaac Grenoble is a son of Adalune Kadif, and I have heard Lemarik say he warned Omar against producing a son that would someday destroy him.”

  “This is all conjecture! I don’t understand why we would have to take Ruth from here,” Simon shook his head. “For the love of God, Lucio, she’s dead. And we have Bari in our custody.”

  “He will not stay there long,” Lucio said ominously. “He has already tried to convince Catharine, your mother, to go with him or take him to Germany to Wewelsburg. What would he know of Wewelsburg? Would he want to follow in Himmler’s footsteps perhaps? Besides, it is only a matter of time before he will simply use his powers to elude us. We can no more hold Bari Kadif than we can hold Omar or Lemarik. I am surprised, he is still on the island at all.”

  “But you are still not telling me what is wrong here,” Simon prompted him and looked back toward the path leading to the cemetery.

  “I don’t know if I can tell you.” Lucio’s anger was flagging. His anger had carried him beyond shock and into the commanding figure of control that repressed his own horror and kept him from joining Omar in his mad flight of hysteria. The Italian succumbed now to his own grief and began to cry.

  Simon pulled him back into the shadows of the porch and made him sit on the old divan. The Healer knelt in front of him and took his hands. It would not do for the others to see the senior member of the expedition break down.

  “You had best tell me now, Brother,” Simon told him. “Before you have time to forget it.”

  Lucio looked up at the worried face of the priest through his tears. “I will never forget it, Simon. Not ever.”

  ((((((((((((()))))))))))))

  Bari sat straight up in the bed and screamed.

  Zebulon fell out of the chair in which he had been propped against the wall. It had been his turn to guard the young man’s door; and he had gone to sleep with the chair leaning against the heavy door. If Bari had tried to open the door, he would have awakened his guard, but this blood-curdling scream made every hair on Zeb’s head stand straight up. He scrambled from the floor, righted the chair and fumbled for the key as Bari continued to scream.

  Doors slammed further along the hall as Reuben and Joey and several of the other residents of the postern gate came rushing to the scene of the disturbance. Zebulon threw open the door and switched on the light. Bari or Isaac sat in the middle of his tousled bed, staring into space, screaming bloody murder over and over. His hair was wet with perspiration, and his hands clenched the cover in front of him in tight fists.

  Zebulon stood back as Reuben rushed past him and crawled onto the bed with the Prophet’s son.

  “Isaac!” he shouted directly in the young man’s face. “Isaac! Stop it!!” He shook him to no avail. He was stiff as a board and his face was almost purple from lack of oxygen.

  Reuben tried to drag him from the bed, and Isaac fought him hand and foot. Zebulon pushed Joey out of the way and helped his brother wrestle the hysterical young man to the floor. He had stopped screaming and begun to shout for his mother. Joey knelt beside him, as they held him down. She grasped his face in both her hands and tried to speak to him.

  “I’m here, Isaac!” she told him. “I’m here! Mother’s here!”

  “You’re not my mother!!” he shouted at her, and kic
ked, and flailed about as they struggled to hold him. “I want my mother! Ruth!! I want Ruth!”

  “Isaac!!” Joey shouted at him in return. “Your mother is not here! I’m here, Isaac. Reuben is here!”

  “They killed my son! They killed my brother!” Bari moaned in despair.

  “It was just a dream!” Reuben yelled at him, but it was no use. He continued to shout for his mother and repeated the same accusation over and over about his son and his brother.

  At last, he succumbed to exhaustion and fainted. They picked him up, and put him back in the bed.

  “What on earth is he talking about?” Joey asked them, as they stood, looking down at him.

  “I have no idea!” Reuben said. “He has no brother or son. It had to be a dream.”

  “I’ll stay inside with him.” Zebulon glanced at the clock beside the bed. It was barely ten o’clock. He had only been on duty for an hour.

  “I’ll stay with you,” Reuben sighed and brought the chair from the hall inside the room.

  Joey opened the tall narrow window facing the sea, and a cool breeze blew through the room, driving out the stuffiness. From beyond the window, the eerie sound of a howling dog drifted to their ears.

  “Someone’s left the dogs out.” Reuben frowned.

  “I don’t think so,” Zebulon said quietly, shuddered, and quickly went to close the window.

  ((((((((((((()))))))))))))

  Michael Ian slid his back down the side of the well housing and sat upon the smooth rocks surrounding the low bricked wall. Galen sat down next to him and looked up at Luke Andrew as the son of the Knight of Death paced the ground in front of them.

  “That’s creepy!” Galen shuddered and glanced at the lighted windows in the postern gatehouse.