by Robert Ryan
The priest came over. He was tall, almost even with Zeke’s 6’3”, and wore wire-rimmed glasses. Early thirties, maybe. Good looking, in a studious, Clark Kent kind of way. Zeke was touched that in this rotten world, with the Church and priests under constant attack, young men still joined the priesthood.
“When was the last mass held in here?” Zeke asked.
“Eight-thirty this morning. There’s another one at ten past noon, if you’d like to attend.”
“I may, but I wanted to ask you something. What was the sermon about at that last mass, do you happen to know?”
“Oh yes. I gave the sermon. I’ll be giving it again at the twelve-ten. Since Halloween is next week, I wanted to emphasize the positive Christian aspect of the tradition—that the word is a contraction for All Hallows’ Eve, the day before All Saints’ Day, which is followed by All Souls’ Day. So rather than being a celebration of evil, it is a time for honoring our saints and praying for our faithful departed.”
Faithful departed. The phrase pricked Zeke’s mind. His family had been faithful. How long had they been departed? Today was Friday. They had been killed on a Friday. The 5th. “What is today’s date, Father?”
“The 26th.”
Three weeks. He had not prayed for them. What good would it do? Prayer when they were alive hadn’t saved them. He clamped a lid on his simmering anger. “Educating people about the positive aspects of Halloween is a laudable goal. You’ve got an uphill battle, though, considering how deeply ingrained the scary tradition is.”
“Very true. But I believe it’s a battle worth fighting.”
Zeke’s eyes flicked from the priest’s face to his white collar and black cassock. His uniform. He had joined God’s army in the battle against evil. A battle worth fighting.
He shoved the thought aside. “I wanted to ask you, Father: did you use passages from scripture in your sermon?”
“Yes.”
“Which book?”
“Several, but mainly Peter and Paul, two of our most famous saints.”
Zeke couldn’t resist. “So, since you were featuring Peter and Paul in the house of Mary, you had Peter, Paul, and Mary.”
The priest’s face lit up. “My parents loved their music. Had all their albums. Come to think of it, maybe the answer we all seek is blowin’ in the wind.”
“Smooth,” Zeke said.
“And since my name is Michael, I could say that in my sermon Michael rowed the boat ashore.”
“Nice. I know the Highwaymen had a big hit with that, but I didn’t remember Peter, Paul, and Mary doing it.”
“It wasn’t a hit for them, but I know we had it on one of their albums. Anyway, maybe I could drive the messages in my sermons home better if I had a hammer.”
“You’re on a roll, Father. Do they have open mike night for priests? You could try your hand at standup.”
“We don’t have one, but it’s a good idea. I might bring it up over dinner tonight.”
“But seriously, folks,” Zeke said. “Did you use anything from Revelation in your sermon?”
“Oh no. All that gloom and doom was what I was trying to avoid. Why do you ask?”
“Just curious. In the pew where I was praying, all the Bibles are bookmarked at passages from John. I thought maybe you had used him in your sermon.”
“That’s interesting. We don’t provide Bibles. With half a million visitors a year, you can see the problem. People often bring their own, though, and then forget them. Which pew were you in?”
“Right here. The first one.”
The priest went into the pew and gathered the Bibles up. “Unusual that there should be so many. Looks like a whole group walked off and forgot them. I’ll take them to the office. Hopefully whoever left them will come back to claim them.”
“It seems odd that they should all be marked at John when you weren’t referring to him, don’t you think?”
The priest seemed amused. “Sounds like my flock may not have found my sermon completely riveting. Or they may just have found John more fascinating than me. In either case, when they come to claim these I may have to smite them.”
“Ahhh, cut ’em slack, Father. They didn’t know somebody was going to come along and rat ’em out.”
“True. Just getting people into church these days is a victory. What brings you here?”
Zeke searched for a neutral answer. “Just trying to get back in touch with my faith.”
“Have you lost it?”
“Yes.”
“I know this sounds like a cliché, but clichés are often true: we are always here for you.”
“Thank you, Father. If you don’t mind my asking, why did you join the priesthood?”
The priest smiled. “It sounds a little corny and self-serving, but this looked like a world in deep, deep trouble to me. ‘Heading to Hell in a handbasket,’ the old saying goes. Goodness was being trampled by evil. I became a priest to save as many souls as I can. If not us, who?”
“I admire you for doing something.”
“It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it.”
“God bless you.”
“And you.”
They parted and Zeke went back into the pew to consider the Bible passages. There were plenty of simple explanations for those Bibles to be marked as they were. And he had been interpreting the passages as though they had been specifically chosen for him—self-fulfilling prophecy. They certainly weren’t the divine inspiration he needed.
Unless…
He had just been praying for something more definitive than the Bible verses when the priest walked up. Had God sent his representative in answer to Zeke’s prayer? Even if He had, it still wasn’t nearly enough.
Zeke began a last walk around the church, savoring the religious imagery that had brought him comfort so many times in the past. Inset around the walls were mosaics about a foot square of the Stations of the Cross, each depicting a scene from the Crucifixion. Zeke had commemorated them almost weekly when he was at Catholic University, but not since. The essence of Christian belief boiled down to the story told in these fourteen panels: that Christ was crucified and died for our sins.
He moved from the first to the second. Pilate, bending to the will of the mob, sentencing Christ to death. Zeke lingered at each scene, feeling the growing inevitability of the very familiar story. The fourth panel exerted a much stronger power.
Jesus meeting up with his mother Mary. Zeke thought of all the times his own mother had tended to his little aches and pains when he was a kid. She had saved his life by getting him to the hospital that day. Mothers. They were always there.
Not his, though. Not anymore. She would never be there again. She was just settling into eternity at the cemetery.
He felt his heart hardening and moved to the fifth station.
Christ being helped with the cross by Simon of Cyrene.
Zeke stared at Simon’s face, trying to remember what Biblical scholars said had happened to him. Something about being executed…
No good deed went unpunished.
Simon’s face appeared to move. Zeke shifted his perspective, thinking it was an illusion created by the reflection of the ambient light.
Simon’s beard gradually disappeared. His face, in profile, turned slowly until it faced Zeke head-on. As it turned, Simon’s head extended beyond the plane of the mosaic, straining toward Zeke and staring at him.
Zeke’s mouth dropped open. An icy tingle rippled across his skin.
The miniature face, no bigger than the end of a finger, had become his own.
The ceramic neck extended as far as it could, while the rest of Simon’s body remained anchored to the otherwise unchanged mosaic.
Its lips moved.
Against his will Zeke leaned closer, cocking his head to see if he could hear what it was saying.
“Help us… Help us…”
Zeke jerked his head back to look at the face. It was still unmistakably his own face, pl
eading with himself for help. Help us? Who else besides Simon—or was it Zeke—needed help? There were only three people in the mosaic: Simon on the left, getting ready to take the cross, and another unknown citizen on the right. Jesus still carried the cross, his head hung in exhaustion.
The head of Jesus began to move. It slowly turned to look at Zeke. The face changed. It became the face of the mosaic upstairs. The one whose eyes had followed him. Scary Jesus.
These eyes now burned into him. The head extended from the mosaic until it hung in the air beside the one that had become him. In unison they said, “Help us.”
A small crucifix in an alcove to his left toppled over. Although the noise it made was slight, Zeke jumped as if shot. He stared at the undamaged crucifix on the floor, then back at the mosaic.
The vision was gone. The mosaic was the same as it had been before.
Zeke looked around. The few people nearby were in pews, absorbed in prayer, oblivious to what had just happened. No one else had witnessed this.
It didn’t matter. Zeke knew in his heart—in his soul—that his decision had been made. For better or worse, his prayer had been answered.
He had gotten his sign.
CHAPTER 27
Leah was on the sofa watching a Frasier rerun when Zeke got home. She clicked off the television. “Everything go okay?”
“Let me put these groceries away and I’ll tell you about it.” He returned a few minutes later and sat beside her on the couch.
“The lawyer had some very interesting news, but first I’ve got to tell you what happened after the lawyer’s. I needed some time alone to think, so I went to the Shrine. I’ve told you about how I used to do some of my best thinking there.” She nodded. “I started…not praying exactly, just kind of having an honest discussion with God, hoping I might get some inspiration on how to proceed with this thing. I didn’t really expect anything, but…I got something.”
Zeke searched for a delicate way to put it, knowing what he was about to say would shatter their dream of settling into a happy life together. Finally he decided there was nothing to do but come right out with it.
He told her of the Station of the Cross coming to life.
“Wow,” she said. “It’s like a scene out of a movie.”
“Except this is real.”
“It’s like God telling you straight out you’re the one. Can’t ask for much more than that. So now what?”
“I’ve got to go for it.”
“We’ve got to go for it.”
“Sweetheart—”
“Zeke, you’re talking about trying to go mano a mano with the Prince of Darkness. In the first place, I couldn’t stand to be away from you that long. Even if you came home every weekend, sitting here worrying about you would be far worse for my health than archaeology. It just wouldn’t work. Besides, I’m fine. If it made you feel better, you could give me a cushy desk job. I could handle the administrative side of it. That’s my strength anyway. And if, by some incredible chance, the Head Bad Guy starts coming after us, I want to be there to fight back. I’ve got a score to settle too, you know.”
“Yeah, I guess you do. Tell you what. Let’s talk about it after dinner. I called Reese on the way home and invited him, because I want him to know what’s going on. We’ll figure out a plan.”
“That ought to be one real interesting after-dinner conversation.”
Zeke fought against a sudden emotion.
Leah leaned closer. “What’s the matter?”
“There’s something else. With my sister gone, I’m the only remaining heir. I get everything. The house, the cars, everything. By far the biggest part is the monetary portion. Among other things, my father had just sold his video chain.”
“I know. He told us at the restaurant.”
“He got a big chunk for that, but there’s more. Turns out they’d made some very smart investments over the years. The bottom line is that the cash part of the estate is worth about ten million dollars.”
Leah fell back against the armrest.
“Yeah,” Zeke said. “I kept thinking how hard they worked for that money. All the dreams they had. Now it’s blood money. I could use it to fund the dig. It’s like my parents left me reward money to find their killer.”
Leah wiped her eyes, as if angry at the weakness in the tears that hung there. “Unless it turns out to be just not humanly possible, let’s do this thing.”
“Amen, sister.”
CHAPTER 28
Zeke, Leah and Reese had finished dinner and were having coffee in three comfortable armchairs arranged in a semicircle near the fireplace. Reese was staring at the crackling blaze, a look of contentment on his face, as though the fire warmed not just his body but his soul. Zeke didn’t want to disturb his peaceful moment, but the conversation had to be started.
“Reese, do you believe in Satan?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean literally: Do you believe in Satan?”
“No. We’ve talked about this. Neither do you.”
“That was then. This is now.”
“You saying you do now?”
“Maybe. A lot’s happened.”
“No question. But—Z. Come on now. You know as well as I do that old ‘Devil made me do it’ stuff is bull. Nipsey Russell used to do that comedy routine about it, remember?”
Zeke smiled. Reese was terrible at trivia. “That was Flip Wilson, man.”
Reese’s earnest frown tickled Zeke even more. “You sure?” Zeke gave him the look and Reese gave up. “All right then. I don’t wanna mess with you on any of that trivia stuff.”
“That’s right.”
Reese looked at Leah. “Do you?”
“What?”
“Believe in Satan.”
“I’m leaning that way. But I know stuff you don’t. Zeke has told me the whole story.”
“What story?”
“Let me bring you up to speed,” Zeke said. He began with getting the scrolls from Dr. Connolly and the messages they contained from Lot and Enoch. He recounted all the bizarre incidents since then, and finished with this morning’s vision in the Crypt Church.
“It’s like something out of a horror movie,” Reese said.
“Leah said the same thing. And that’s not all. I got a call from Michael Price. I met with him.”
Reese cast a quick sideways glance at Leah. “The Michael Price?”
“Same one. He’s a forensic psychologist now. Tries to get into the heads of the sickest killers on death row. Trying to atone for what he did, he says.”
Zeke watched Reese’s eyes dart uneasily from him to Leah, then back to him. “I told Leah about the jungle, Reese. She’s part of my life—of this—and she needs to know.”
“Yeah,” Reese said. “You’re right.”
“Here’s the kicker: Michael Price has been called in as the expert to question my family’s murderer.”
“Jesus,” Reese whispered. “Of all the people. What are the odds?”
“Like hitting the lottery,” Zeke said. “The lottery from hell.”
Reese looked at Leah. “What do you think?”
“Zeke’s not the type to be imagining things. Or to be jumping to conclusions.”
“True.” He looked back at Zeke. “Has Price talked to the guy?”
“Once. Later that night he apparently died in his cell of a heart attack.”
“Jesus.” Reese picked up his coffee, then put it back down without drinking. “Did the SOB say anything before he died? About why he did it?”
“Stuck to the same story you heard him tell the police. Satan made him do it. Price seemed to believe him.”
The fire was dying and a slight chill had crept in. Reese picked his cup back up and drank this time. “So what do you want to do?”
“I want to put together an archaeological dig.”
“A dig for what?”
“Sodom and Gomorrah, initially. Lot says the opening to Hell—if Dr. Con
nolly’s interpretation is right—is near there. That opening is ultimately what we’d be looking for.”
“Sodom and Gomorrah,” Reese said. “Where are they? In Israel?”
“Somewhere around there, but nobody knows for sure. They’ve never been found.”
“So how would you know where to dig?”
“Right now I don’t know. But I have the scrolls, which at least give us someplace to start. I’m going to take it to the best expert I can find and go from there.”
“Okay,” Reese said. “Suppose you do the impossible. Then what?”
“I head on down and pay Lucifer a visit. Bust a cap in his ass.”
“That’s gonna have to be one real big cap, cap’n.”
“I’ll come with whatever Kryptonite we need.”
“Slow down, Z-man. Even if we say that the craziest thing I’ve ever heard is true, you still got, I don’t know, forty or fifty problems. One, you’re not an archaeologist. Two, you’ve got a business to run. Three, you got this here girl to take care of. Four, something like that would take some serious cash. That’s just for starters.”
“We learned the basics about archaeology in Special Forces. Still, I’d hire somebody to run the dig. And you could handle the gym. And…I’ve got the money.”
“The gym is doing good, but I know you’re not that rich.”
Zeke told him about the inheritance.
Reese wiped a large hand across his face. “Your folks, man. Always doing for others.” He looked at Leah and Zeke. “Y’all could use that money and live happily ever after.”
“Uh-uh,” Zeke said. “Ain’t gonna be no happily ever after until I get this out of my system. This is way bigger than the three of us.”
Leah said, “What do you mean?”
“I mean suppose—just suppose—there is some evil entity behind all the senseless slaughter since the dawn of humanity. We’ve got a chance to stop him. To trace evil to its source and cut it off at the head.”
Zeke stood and began to pace, his voice rising as he spoke.
“Think of all the innocent blood that’s been spilled for thousands of years. Enough to form its own ocean. All those dictators and butchers throughout history. Millions of families. Women. Children. Babies. The whole history of the Middle East. Of Africa. Of the United States. Of the world. It’s all written in blood. Whole races wiped out over and over. The Holocaust. Slavery. Sudan. Rwanda. Somalia. AIDS. Venereal disease run amok. Child prostitution. Drugs ripping people apart. Raping and pillaging everywhere you turn. Terrorism. Suicide bombings in the name of religion. Hundreds—thousands—of innocent people slaughtered every day, people just minding their business, trying to make it through this struggle we call Life. On and on it goes. Nothing but sorrow and desperation. Hatred everywhere. Mindless, wanton killing.”
