The Mirror Apocalypse

by John Ayang

  Dana introduced Dr. Horacek. “This is Dr. Horacek. He has reason to suspect that his son is among the victims.”

  “Do you want to take a look, Sir, at some of the retrieved items here?” The female agent asked politely. “Some of the items are burned beyond what we can read, but some were merely scorched.”

  The items ranged from flasks of water and coffee mugs to half-burnt shoes and wristwatches. There were a few blackened cell phones, some bent from the scorching heat or completely burned beyond recognition. One of the phones had one corner still fresh and Dr. Horacek pointed at it, “The phone. Let me see the phone. His phone was an Apple iPhone 4 with a green plastic casing.” One of the agents grabbed the burnt phone with a tong and held it for Dr. Horacek’s inspection. It was impossible to really tell, even under the powerful search beam of the FBI torch light, whether the color of the little part of it that was not burnt was green, deep grey, or even black. Just then, another FBI agent walked up with an object clasped with a tong and announced that it was a wallet from the vehicle they could tell was a sports utility of some type.

  “The majority of the contents are still intact, especially the cards.”

  They started opening the wallet, the outer part of which was scorched dark. But because the wallet was made of a special material that looked like leather, but was not really leather, it had, for the most part, withstood the flames and the heat. They used tongs and started pulling out a few cards that were not burnt. The police and the FBI agents were relieved to have chanced upon one item that could give a positive identification of at least one of the victims with certainty. They pulled out credit and bank cards, and then the driver’s license. All four cards bore the unmistakable name of Cletus Nicholas McCarthy. The picture on his driver’s license was the one he took in his late twenties, and he looked very handsome, with a pleasant face. Dr. Horacek looked at it for a few seconds, and then suddenly belted out a loud cry, fell on his knees, and wept loud and long.

  “My son! Oh, my son, Cletus! My son! What has happened to you? Why has this happened to you? Oh, my son, my son!”

  Dana, Jackson, and the lady FBI agent tried to no avail to console him. Not knowing what else to do, they gradually inched their way from him and allowed him to weep out his frustration and anger. Fu Pham was so confused at everything that happened that, also not knowing what to do, he simply wept along with his boss, wringing his hands helplessly. After what seemed like ages, Dr. Horacek was able to pull himself together. He begged and was allowed to have a peek at the charred corpse of Cletus McCarthy, which had crumbled in a heap on the burnt and twisted rubber covering of the driver’s seat. He was assured that the scene would remain that way until he returned in the morning, as the FBI and the police would make sure all identifications were done and relatives of all the victims were satisfied that they had identified their loved ones before they would release the ashes to any of the families.

  It was not a pleasant ride back to Norfolk that evening. Dr. Horacek felt in some sense that he was partly to blame. If he had not invited Cletus McCarthy to visit him, he would have been safe and sound in Houston. IN his heart, though, he knew that what happened was just sheer bad luck that Cletus McCarthy was on that portion of the road at that particular time. All the way back to Norfolk, he agonized over how he was going to break the news to the people in Houston, and in what order. Should he start with his wife, Barbara? Or should he start with Cletus’s parents? Either way, it was going to be a very difficult task. He decided to reach home first before dialing anybody with the saddest story of his life. He had felt nothing when he received news of his wife’s death along El Paso highway years ago. That was because he had never bonded with her the way he bonded with Cletus, after discovering that the experiment he’d done years ago had blossomed into such a brilliant young man. Why fate should have thrown him such a wicked curve of bad luck just then was not clear. Dr. Horacek sank into deep grief.

  He dropped off his janitor and gave no response to the latter’s “good night, Boss. I pray for you,” and drove straight home. His movements were like a zombie’s as he parked the car in his garage and went and sat in the sitting room, lost in deep thought. After what seemed like ages, he picked up his cell phone to make the calls that he could not dodge. Two more calls had come in from the McCarthys and he wondered why he did not hear the phone ring. Instead of returning those calls right away, he decided to call Barbara first with the bad news, strictly warning her not to relay it to Crystal until morning. Then he dialed Stephen McCarthy.

  Houston, Texas

  Saturday, April 6, 2013

  THE FUNERAL MASS was scheduled to be held at the Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, in downtown Houston. Umberto Cardinal Pacino Felice had insisted it should be so. Everyone knew why. It was the least the Church could do to show solidarity and compassion to the McCarthy family and to demonstrate that even though Cletus had applied for and obtained the lay status, the Church could not turn its back on him at such a time. Most commentators had already made angry accusations to the effect that the Church had used him as a pawn to further its moral indoctrination, but abandoned him to his fate when he fell into the post-partum depression and identity crisis following the trauma of being outed in court. A good number of the priests saw it that way, too.

  “Rome should not have granted him the request for laicization,” Fr. Polanski had observed, a few days earlier, at the gathering of a handful of the priests who got together at his place to discuss how to help the family plan the funeral service. “They simply let him punish himself for a wrong that wasn’t his fault.”

  “Looks to me like they considered him an embarrassment to the Church,” Fr. Gary Logan, one of the young priests known for his controversialist views of the Roman Curia said. “They had probably wished he hadn’t been ordained. Cletus just handed them the chance of their lives on a golden platter and they jumped at it.”

  “Hopefully, someone doesn’t snitch to Rome before the funeral date that he’s going to have a priestly burial with full honors,” another priest interjected with a hint of disapproval for anybody who would do that.

  “Well, he is still a priest,” yet another replied. “He only chose to live in the lay state.”

  “Yeah. Once ordained, you are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek,” Fr. Logan concurred. “I would be greatly surprised if the Cardinal had decided otherwise. He deserves to be buried a priest.”

  The pre-meeting conversation went on for a few more minutes, moving from supporting the decision to bury Cletus McCarthy as a priest to the momentary policy about the ordination of IVF-born candidates. Some of the priests figured that since there might be the possibility of other IVF-conceived or surrogate-born seminarians in the pipeline, there was need for the Church to get out a canon legitimizing the ordination of such candidates once they have fulfilled all requirements. They agreed to prod Fr. Brady Callahan to petition Rome to expedite action in promulgating such a canon. Eventually, Fr. Polanski called the meeting to order and they began discussing the business of the day.

  That was five days previously. Now the Co-Cathedral Church was packed full on Saturday, April 6, the day of the funeral. The usual wake and Vespers with Office of the Dead that would have taken place the prior evening were shifted to that day. Everything was to be done the same day. At 9 a.m. on the dot, Cardinal Felice, wearing a violet Cope and Mitre, walked up to the door to receive the casket of Cletus Nicholas McCarthy. He was flanked by altar servers and his personal Master of Ceremonies. The crowd on the front steps and landing was thick. The McCarthy and the Horacek families, all swathed in black, formed a semi-circle behind the casket. There was scarcely a dry eye among them. The ladies—Hannah, Barbara, Crystal, and Jennifer—had swollen eyes from copious weeping. They kept sniffling with effortful restraint and continually dabbed their eyes, which couldn’t stop flowing with tears. The men—Stephen, Josef, John, Trevor, and Josh—had
red, watery eyes, and tautly clenched lips. They were visibly battling anger lumps in their throats as they kept straining to swallow gulps of saliva, but gallantly stayed choked on their ties. The crowd kept squirming as is characteristic of such gatherings, with people shuffling and juggling for a better spot to catch a better view of the action up front. Some strained to see the casket, others tried to catch a glimpse of the McCarthy and Horacek families. Cardinal Felice moved closer to speak the rite of reception.

  “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” he chanted. The people responded with a resounding ‘Amen.’

  He continued to read the brief opening prayer, and when he concluded, the organist played the Dies Irae, Dies Illa. A choir of priests in black cassocks and white surplices picked up the doleful timbre of the music and chanted the holy dirge in the most somber, Gregorian tone they could muster.

  Dies irae, dies illa,

  Solvet saeculum in favilla,

  Teste David cum Sybilla.

  The procession slowly began to move into the church with the Cardinal leading the way. The choir of priests stationed itself in the section right of the altar and continued its chant. The casket, draped with a white pall marked with a large purple cross band running the whole length and width of it, was stationed centrally by the three steps leading up the sanctuary, and perpendicular to the altar. The Book of the Gospels was placed on top of it with a purple stole on top of the book. The Cardinal and his train of ministers remained standing in the sanctuary, as well as the people who had filled up the pews. Then the choir belted out in a crescendo:

  Ingemisco, tamquam reus:

  Culpa rubet vultus meus:

  Suplicanti parce Deus.

  As if on cue, Hannah McCarthy lost it. The loud shriek caught everybody off guard. The other three ladies—Barbara, Jennifer, and Crystal—let go in unison, joining Hannah in her bitter wailing. The somber chant fell apart for a second or two, but quickly regained tempo and coherence. Church wardens and ushers rushed in to help the men of the McCarthy and Horacek families calm down their grief-stricken women. It was a daunting task, as the women wept with abandon and refused to be consoled. As if to really make a point before God, on behalf of Cletus Nicholas McCarthy, the choir, for its part, waxed stronger with the chant in its bid to, perhaps, overshadow the wailing. The loud, but dolefully plain, chant blended with the wailing to produce such a fearsome aura that everybody trembled. Children were so scared that they joined in the wailing, too. Greg Sullivan later observed that it was like judgment day.

  Eventually, the choir of priests finished their chant and sat down. The sorrows of the ladies were also finally assuaged and reduced to heaving and sniffling, and Church wardens went around dutifully serving boxes of Kleenex wipes. A couple of cantors went to the microphone and spoke the Office for the Dead. For almost an hour, the clergy recited the Office. Then the Cardinal read the closing prayer and left the sanctuary with his train. There was no viewing because the casket could not be opened for obvious reasons. What was put inside the casket at the accident scene in Norfolk on US 58 and driven back to Texas were the ashes of Cletus McCarty, swept from the driver’s seat of his burnt-out vehicle. After a fifteen-minute hiatus, the Cardinal and his Mass train came in again for the funeral Mass.

  The funeral Mass itself took just an hour. The readings were carefully chosen to reflect the mood and the occasion. The first reading from the Book of Wisdom iterated that the just man, though he die early, shall be at rest, and the second reading gave the assurance that hope cannot fail believers because the love of God has been poured into their hearts. The Cardinal gave a very profound homily. At one point, he dwelt on how Cletus McCarthy was the perfect offering that enriched the lives of many apart from his parents. He was offered to them at birth to fulfill their parental vocation, he offered his life to serve the people of God as a priest, and, finally, became the lamb of sacrifice offered as a holocaust to God to open the door of mercy for others after him. He regretted that line immediately, as it set off the storm of wailing again, a storm that took more than three minutes to calm down. After that, he studiously avoided any overly sentimental utterances, and the rest of the Mass continued tamely to the end. Bishop Montana did the Prayer of Final Commendation and the funeral procession left for the cemetery.

  Stephen and Hannah McCarthy had insisted that Cletus be buried in the family plot they had bought at Rest Haven Cemetery along North Freeway, instead of the Archdiocesan Cemetery in Dickenson. The funeral procession left the Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart and snaked its way along Jefferson, connected with Dallas Street, and headed to the cemetery along Interstate 45 North. The crowd was uncommonly large and it formed a procession of almost two miles, slowing traffic on I-45 and holding up other traffic streams from tributary roads pouring into it. It was an amazing sight to see. A great number of motorists voluntarily pulled off on the shoulder at the sound of the sirens and the numerous colorful lights from the police escorts’ motorcycles. Faces that peered through car windows seemed sad and inquisitive at the same time. The air seemed to stand still. Though it gave no indication of imminent rain, the sky spotted huge swaths of clouds that made it impossible to tell the position of the sun. The very atmosphere itself seemed to be in mourning for Cletus Nicholas McCarthy as he went to his eternal rest.

  “Man!” Fr. Brady Callahan exclaimed. “Feels like the funeral of a god. Never seen this type of crowd at a funeral for a long time. Not since that of Bishop Nold.”

  “Nold’s funeral pulled only half this crowd,” Bishop Montana said from the back of the car, in his characteristically husky, but strong, voice. “I think it must have something to do with the publicity his case got. I’ll tell ya, that case garnered a lot of well-deserved sympathy for him.”

  “It is the funeral of a god, indeed,” Fr. Polanski replied, waxing prophetic. “When his vehicle burst into flames on Norfolk Highway 58 that fateful evening, and the spirit of Cletus McCarthy rose in the fumy smoke toward Heaven, a god had died. I believe the Cardinal hit the nail on the head in his homily.”

  “We’re gonna miss him for a long time,” Fr. Brady said, dolefully.

  “Yes, we are certainly gonna miss him,” Bishop Montana concurred.

  Fr. Brady, Fr. Polanski, and Bishop Montana had decided to carpool to the cemetery, with Fr. Brady driving. They fell back into silence as the hearse exited the freeway onto the feeder road leading up to Rest Haven. A single white truck that stood by the gates took over the lead while the police escorts fell off. It took more than twenty minutes to get all the traffic parallel parked. When they got out of their vehicles, Bishop Montana couldn’t help but nod acknowledgement of the ingenuity of the truck driver who, on noticing the long line of vehicles, had decided to wrap them around two adjacent sections of the cemetery, forming a big letter S, to accommodate everyone. “He got it right,” he muttered to himself.

  Fr. Polanski was given the honor of officiating at the graveside for his friend. He positioned himself at the head of the casket and choked on his first attempt to speak the prayers. Bishop Montana and Fr. Brady moved in on either side of him and placed their hands on his shoulders, rubbing and rocking him gently to calm him. The McCarthys and Horaceks, noticing his reaction, broke down again in bitter wailing and sobbing. Everyone was heart-broken watching Cletus McCarthy’s families on both sides, and there was scarcely a dry eye at the grave side that afternoon. Hannah McCarthy had launched forward in an attempt to throw herself on the casket, but was immediately restrained by other mourners who stood beside her and were quick enough to notice her move. It took almost three minutes before they could reasonably be calmed down. Fr. Polanski made great effort to compose himself. Eventually, he drew a deep breath, exhaled, and gallantly recited aloud the blessing of the grave.

  “Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord,” he said.

  “And let perpetual light shine upon him,” the crowd
responded.