The Awakening (The Judas Curse Book 1)

by Angella Graff

  Mark looked at Ben, the relief in his face very apparent. “I realize this. I'm not asking you to break the law or do anything outside of your power. I simply wanted to know where he was, and how to get to him.”

  Ben bit his lip and glanced in his mirror back at Abby, who was now sitting back, her arms folded across her chest. She was angry at him, that was obvious, but making amends with her was far down on the list of his priorities at the moment. “Look... just... just say that it's true, that he has some weird freaky power of healing. How long before it happens again? I mean—” Ben trailed off, shaking his head. “This sounds so crazy.”

  “Crazy, yes, but it happened,” Mark replied.

  “How does it work, exactly? I mean, anyone with a disease or disability just comes and touches him and bam! Cured?”

  “No, not quite,” Mark said with a small smile. “The universe works in a very bizarre way, outside of mortal comprehension. I've been around two millennia and I still don't quite understand it. What I do understand, however, is that some people are meant to die, and some are not. Yehuda might lay hands on one hundred people, and sometimes one hundred will be healed, and sometimes only one will be. Those who are meant to suffer, suffer. Those who are meant to die, will die. Some, however, are meant to live, to fulfill a greater purpose. So they are healed and they move on.”

  “So running a string of ill-stricken patients by him, they won't all be healed?” Ben asked.

  “No, but don't imagine that such a thing hasn't occurred before,” Mark said in a dark tone. “Don't imagine that he hasn't been overpowered by those who wanted to steal his healing for money and fame. And please don't assume it doesn't have an ill effect on him. Even in the Bible, when Yeshua possessed the powers, it drove him mad.”

  “Yeshua?” Ben asked.

  “Jesus,” Mark clarified simply. “The power took a toll on him mentally and physically. At one point he nearly died, and even when he was nursed back to health, he was never quite the same.”

  “The fig tree?” Ben asked a little sardonically. The fig tree incident had been a passage Ben had hung on to, something to show others who challenged his Atheistic beliefs, that at one point, Jesus was a man. A crazy man. A man who would have been a lunatic on the side of the street holding a sign and screaming about hellfire.

  Mark shrugged. “It's best to assume that most of what appears in the Bible is more of a fable than a fact, however yes, that would be evidence of the price Yeshua paid for that gift.”

  “So if Judas is somehow still alive, lying in a hospital, possessing the same power that Jesus had, why isn’t Jesus walking the earth as an immortal?” Ben asked, thinking he'd gotten Mark on an inconsistency.

  Mark smiled. “It was passed on to Yehuda, his brother, and this is the price he's paid for it.”

  “His brother?” Ben asked. “You're trying to tell me that Jesus and Judas were brothers?”

  Mark sighed and turned to look out the window. “The story is long and complicated.”

  “And I’m going to take a pass,” Ben said, despite his curiosity piqued. He just couldn’t listen to Mark talk about that anymore. “So what are you going to do now, then? Now that you know where he is?”

  “I'm going to research what I can in an attempt to remove Yehuda from the hospital.”

  Ben pursed his lips and glanced over at Mark. “You do realize any forced entry and they’ll know it was you, right? You were seen, and I’m obligated to give out any information if he disappears.”

  “Ben!” Abby chastised, but the two men ignored her.

  “I’ll do everything I can to keep my actions legal and make sure you’re left out of it. I don’t want to make your life any more complicated than it’s already become. I appreciate everything you've done for us, though, and I owe you a big thanks.” Mark tipped his glasses down, showing a sincerity Ben didn’t doubt.

  But Mark’s sincerity wasn’t the issue. Mark wanted to remove this John Doe from the hospital under the pretense that he was some mystical immortal. The idea was ridiculous and spat in the face of all logic.

  The conflict waging war in Ben's head was giving him a migraine. He pulled over to a small cafe near the coast as they drove towards San Francisco. There was outside seating, and the little cafe sold southwestern style shrimp tacos, fish filets freshly caught off the dock, and steaming bowls of soup.

  As they got out of the car, Mark with his cane extended, Ben stopped him. “Look, we know you're not blind, so you can cut the act for a while.”

  “This is for your sake as well as mine,” Mark told him and took Abby's arm as they went to the outside window to order.

  Ben stood by the car, fingers running through his hair. He was upset. He was no closer to understanding what had happened to him at the church and what had happened at the hospital, and not having answers was the worst form of torture for the detective.

  With a heavy sigh, Ben knew all he could do was take the information Mark was giving him and do his best to pull from it threads of truth to try and solve the most complicated mystery he had ever faced.

  sixteen

  Mark exited the car with Abby close at his heels as Ben dropped the pair of them off at the curb near Sacred Heart's staff housing. Though he had his glasses on, Mark was anxious to get inside before anyone approached him and noticed any differences with his eyes.

  He didn't protest when Abby followed him into his apartment, but the one thing he wanted to do right then was be alone. It was late and he knew everyone was very tired. He needed to work out a plan, figure out how he could get to Yehuda safely and steal away before anyone noticed. That was more complicated than it sounded.

  Had this been decades ago, Mark could have broken in and taken Yehuda in the dark, early morning hours. However with the invention of security systems, alarms and armed guards, things could get complicated. Mark was immortal, but even with his powers and strength, he was not impervious to harm. A well timed bullet could bring him down hard, and recovering from those injuries always took time.

  Abby closed the door behind them once they were inside and locked it. Mark finally removed the glasses, rubbing the spot on his nose where they had been resting and let out a small breath. “Thank you for seeing me inside.” His tone conveyed his desire for her to leave, but her face made it clear she would not be bullied out.

  Abby shook her head and crossed her arms. “You're not getting rid of me that easily, sorry,” she declared. She flopped down on his sofa, kicked her legs up on the table and stared at him until he took a seat in the chair across from her.

  With a sigh, Mark folded his hands over his knee and studied her. Her dark eyes were narrow, determined, and though she'd been presented with the most impossible information, she was taking it well and comfortably.

  “I don't want to get rid of you, Abby, I promise. It's been a long day and I need to sort out my thoughts.”

  “Well, so do I,” she retorted. “You drop this bombshell on me, how you're sort of immortal, not blind, and Judas Iscariot is still alive, walking around with Jesus powers. Frankly, Mark, I don't think I can just go home and head to bed.”

  “I understand,” Mark said, meaning it completely. “Is there anything I can do to help ease your mind?”

  “I don't know,” Abby said, giving a helpless shrug. She fell into a silence, staring at him for a while, and then she asked, “Can you see with those contacts on?”

  Mark smiled and shook his head. “Just the difference between light and dark, for the most part. They are thick and heavy and cover the whole of my eye.”

  “So with them on you really are kind of blind?”

  “I am.”

  “And you really read Braille?”

  Mark laughed, though he knew the question wasn't mean to sound so absurd. “I do. I mastered the writing the year it was presented as an option for the visually impaired. Quite ingenious it is, if I may say so.”

  “Um, so... is this the first time you've seen me?” she as
ked after a pregnant pause.

  Mark hesitated before he answered. “From time to time you've caught me unawares here in my apartment and I was not wearing the contacts.”

  “Ah, the glasses,” she said, pointing her finger at him.

  “Yes, when I don’t have my contacts handy, I use the glasses.” he replied with a nod. “So no, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen you.”

  She gave a little laugh and shrugged. “I bet Ben feels pretty stupid now after making fun of me for getting all dressed up today.” Mark cocked his head to the side in confusion so she elaborated. “I like you, obviously, and so I kind of went out of my way to try and look nice. Of course I didn't know that you were some sort of immortal guy or I probably wouldn't have wasted my time.”

  Mark winced a little at the bitterness in her tone. “I apologize if I misled you, it was not my intention. I’ve been aware of your feelings and honestly I’d hoped that in our friendship they would subside naturally.”

  Abby waved her hand. “It's not a big deal. I think I'm a little more shaken up and honestly, not quite sure if I fully grasp everything you've told me.”

  “I expect not,” Mark said with a little shrug. Instead of letting her continue, Mark got up and went to the kitchen, putting the kettle on. As Abby sat on the couch waiting, Mark leaned against the counter as the kettle boiled, and he closed his eyes.

  He hadn't felt Yehuda's presence in the city, not until he was in the room with him, and that frightened him. He had never been so close to Yehuda before and not sensed his presence. Now, Yehuda was unconscious, trapped in his own nightmares, restrained in a hospital, and Mark had no idea how he was going to go about in getting him released.

  He knew that if he had to, if it came down to it, he could break Yehuda out and disappear, but he didn't want it to come to that. He was happy at Sacred Heart, and frankly he was tired of running. He was tired of living in hiding, living terrified that any time he wrote down his name, the paper was going to burn, and some religion was going to spring out of the ashes.

  The whistling kettle startled Mark out of his thoughts. Grabbing two cups and his container of teas, he walked back out to the couch and set everything down on the small table. Abby was watching him with a hooded expression, only her wide eyes giving away her feelings of confusion and struggle to believe him.

  Mark offered her a small smile as she picked out her tea. “Questions?”

  “Are you the Mark from the Bible?” she blurted.

  Mark wasn't expecting that question, despite it being the most logical. In fact, the few times he had revealed his identity, no one had thought to ask him that. He smiled and gave a little shrug. “Yes and no. The words in the gospel attributed to my name are a very warped version of what I produced in my time. The original manuscript was indeed my handwriting, but not my words.”

  Abby frowned in confusion. “So... none of what the Bible says is true?”

  “Not everything,” Mark said. “The Bible exists as a guide for people following the words of Christ, however that guide has misrepresented the very words and ideals of the man known as Yeshua, or Jesus. The Bible, like so many other books represented as historical fact, has to be combed through, with only fragments of truth remaining in its pages. Then again, it was never intended to be a historical re-telling of our lives.”

  “If you wrote the Bible, but none of what is in the Bible is the truth…” Abby trailed off and shook her head. “Sorry, I'm just completely confused.”

  Mark let out a breath and rubbed his face. He was exhausted and anxious, and absolutely terrified of what might happen if modern science properly got their hands on the genetic make-up of Judas Iscariot. Time was ticking, and Mark was not in a position to take Yehuda from that bed and whisk him away as he had done many times in the past.

  He looked over at the inquisitive face of Abby and felt this pressing need to just tell her. To just tell her everything, their past, their present, what the future might hold. The confusion and the curse, and the never ending loneliness and pain that came with absolute immortality. He wanted to tell Abby every truth that had been manipulated into a blood-spilling lie under the guise of religion. He desperately wanted to tell her what it felt like to try and take your life, only to wake up in pain and even more alone, cursed to walk the earth without any sense of real purpose, identity, or destination.

  Yet, Mark realized as he stared back at her, he couldn't do any of those things. He could not bear to watch her have to shoulder the weight of his curse. He wasn’t going to stay here, he had no choice but to leave. Asking Abby to hold the knowledge wasn’t fair.

  “I wish I could tell you everything,” Mark eventually said into the echoing silence of his little apartment. “I wish I could just sit you down and explain to you everything I have ever learned in the two thousand years I have been walking this earth, but I can't.”

  “Can you tell me why not?” she asked, her voice tinged with hurt.

  “Because every time I sit down and tell my story, Abby, people die. Religions spring up and fanatics are born and people are persecuted and murdered all in the name of a God that doesn't really exist the way people think he does.”

  “But I wouldn't do that!” Abby insisted, jabbing her finger at herself. “Mark, you know me! You know that I would trust and believe everything you say!”

  “I have no control over this curse, Abby, and I have no control over who it effects. All I know is not a single soul who was exposed to the knowledge, to the curse, were unable to resist its effects. And in the end there was always blood and war. I care about you too much, Abby. Just trust me when I say that, okay?” That was a tiny lie. There had been one who had resisted, but Mark hadn’t thought of her in hundreds of years, and right now he couldn’t let his mind go there. Not to that place. Abby was like her, too. So much, but he couldn’t trust that this young girl would be able to resist the curse. Abby’s death on his hands would be too much to bear.

  Abby let out a breath and gave a small nod. “Okay. I won't ask you about the Bible anymore, but I just hope one day I can understand everything that's going on.”

  “Perhaps one day you will. Perhaps one day this curse will end and I'll figure out how to stop the chaos, and then everyone can know.”

  Abby sipped her tea, staring at Mark out of the corner of her eye. She gave a small laugh and shook her head. “You're really telling me the truth, aren't you? You're actually a man from Biblical times.”

  Mark gave a little shrug and a half smile, a little frightened that she was able to believe that much. “I'm afraid so.”

  “And you really knew Jesus?”

  “I did. I knew his entire family.”

  Abby shook her head and gave another laugh. “I literally don't even know how to wrap my mind around that concept. If anyone knew they'll think that I've gone completely around the bend. My brother is probably plotting some kind of intervention for me right now, knowing that I'm with you and probably eating up everything you say.”

  “Your brother is a good man and he loves you, and he only wants the best for you,” Mark corrected. He'd seen that kind of love and protection between siblings before, and in his age he knew that sort of thing was rare.

  “My brother is an idiot,” Abby said sharply. “I mean, he's a smart guy, obviously. He's head detective, he graduated in the top tenth percentile in his class, and his deductive reasoning skills are better than most detectives around. But he's also a close-minded fool who won't consider that there are other things out there besides what we can see, and touch, and smell, and hear. He refuses to accept that there is more out there, whatever that more may be.”

  “Your brother is merely accepting the world that he knows, and that in itself is its own path to enlightenment,” Mark said with a shrug. “Don't dismiss his way of believing in things so readily, just because they're different from yours.”

  Abby cocked her head to the side. “So you don't mind that even though you've looked Jesus Christ i
n the eye, touched him, spoken with him, Ben doesn't even believe the man actually existed?”

  “Jesus is now portrayed as a sort of Hebrew Herculean character; a demi-God, all powerful, able to transcend death and bodily rose to the right hand of God Almighty. I don't blame any person with any amount of reasoning to reject the idea that man existed.” Abby opened her mouth to respond, but Mark held up a hand, “Forgive me for cutting this short, but today has made me exhausted and I have a lot of things to work out for the near future.” He was desperate to end this line of discussion. It was growing too close to the truth for Mark’s comfort, and Abby was the sort who would have absorbed every word.

  Abby set her cup down and met Mark’s eyes. “Are you really going to leave?”

  “I can't say for certain. All I know is that Yehuda can't stay in that hospital long. Eventually people are going to start noticing him, and the things he can do, and when that happens, bad things happen. I appreciate all your help today, Abby, and Ben's as well. When you speak to him next, express my thanks and I hope we might all see each other once more in the future.”

  Abby's face was pained as Mark walked her to the door, and she paused before opening it. “Just, would it be too bad if you kept in touch... if you really had to disappear?”

  “I can't make any promises except the promise to try,” Mark lied. He knew perfectly well if he had to go, he would go, and that would be the end of knowing Abby, and Ben, and this gorgeous city. The thought pained Mark, but it was a pain of loss he was used to after so many years.

  With a sigh, Abby stepped into the hall, but paused and turned, leaning to give Mark a quick kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for everything.”

  Mark nodded, his eyes closed to keep up his ruse should anyone walk by, and as he heard her footsteps start to disappear down the hall, he shut the door and leaned against it. He wished again, as he did so often in his many centuries, that this curse came with a disconnect; with an ability to turn off mortal feelings, to be numb to the sufferings of humans, and to not connect to them at all.