by J. R. Rain
“So cold,” he whispered.
I noticed something glowing in his eyes, something dead center in his pupils. I realized that something was me. It was my reflection. My reflection.
I’m real, I thought.
“You were shot in the head,” he said, speaking in low tones, as if afraid he might scare me away. “And the neck and chest. All over. Someone killed you.”
I nodded, wondering if he could see me nod.
“Who shot you?” he asked.
I shook my head. He didn’t need to know that. It wasn’t his business, and there was still much I needed to work out with the boy, let alone the brother who killed me.
“Okay, so you don’t want to talk about it. I get it. Can I touch you again? I don’t want to be rude; I’m not sure what the etiquette is here.”
I smiled and nodded. He smiled, too, and gently ran his open hand along my upper arm. When he pulled his hand away, he shivered and said, “Wow, what a rush.”
I heard voices from outside the sanctuary. People were coming.
“You gave my friend quite a fright,” said Ray.
I nodded gravely. I felt bad.
“He can be a bit of a jerk sometimes, I know,” Ray said. “But he’s a good guy. He helped get me this job, you know.”
We looked at each other some more. The power from the two cameras was nearly depleted, which meant I was running out of energy. Already, I felt myself fading.
“Hey, you’re disappearing,” he said. “Was it something I said?”
I shook my head. The voices were now just outside the double doors that connected the cathedral to the school. Ray looked over his shoulder at the sounds.
“They’re coming,” he said, and when he looked back, I was already gone. But not really. I was still standing there before him. Behind him, the two cameramen gaped at the whole scene in wide-eyed wonderment.
And just as the doors burst open, Ray leaned forward and whispered directly into my ear, “You do not belong here, James. It’s time for you to go home.”
He stepped back and smiled, and I stood there utterly stunned as people and cameras flooded into the nave, led by a very pale Ponytail.
It was after dawn by the time the film crew finally packed up and left.
The principal was the last to leave. She looked tired and beaten down, and I didn’t blame her. It had been a hell of a night, and I certainly hadn’t helped things by scaring Ponytail half to death. I still felt bad for him. He didn’t deserve that.
I was alone. Jacob was off playing in one of the classrooms. It was the weekend, so he would be playing alone. Early-morning light filtered down through the many stained-glass windows, casting a kaleidoscope of colors across the pews. I liked the display of colors and could watch them all morning long, which I often did.
High up on the far wall, above the sanctuary and above the crucifix of Christ and the massive painting of the Mount of Olives, an amorphous shadow separated from the deeper, darker shadows of the ceiling. The shadow took shape, formed arms and legs, and crept slowly down the wall. It stopped between the painting and the crucifix.
And waited.
It was their way of inviting me to join them. Often, I answered their call, rising up to be with them, disappearing into them, my individual thoughts ceasing to exist as I merged into The One. And their thoughts, more often than not, were centered on protecting that damn painting.
“And they’ve done a marvelous job of it, haven’t they?” said a humor-filled voice just below the entities.
Not too many things surprised me these days—this did.
The only thing below the entities was, of course, the statue of Jesus Christ hanging on the cross. At the moment, it appeared to be trying to pull free one of its nailed hands.
Sweet Jesus.
“Exactly,” said the statue. “Now, how about giving a brother a hand?”
The statue didn’t wait for my help.
As I stared up in stunned silence, incapable of moving even if I had wanted to help, the statue went to work freeing its nailed hands from the cross. As it did so, the three red-eyed beings scuttled quickly away and huddled together in the far corner of the room. I nearly scuttled away with them.
At least I’m not the only one seeing things, I thought.
The statue made a fist with its right hand, gripping the nail head in reverse, so to speak, and began working the spike back and forth, crying out as he did so. When the nail finally came free, the statue bellowed like a wounded and dying animal.
Sweet Jesus.
He did the same with his other hand, grunting and gasping, and when it came free, he found himself balancing precariously on the single nail driven through both his feet. Balancing in that position as rivulets of sweat poured down his damaged body, he plucked each nail from the center of his palms like a magician performing a macabre magic trick. He dropped the bloodied spikes to the carpeted dais below, where they clamored and bounced and came to rest side by side.
Had I been human, I would have vomited violently.
Next, he reached up and gripped the crown of thorns encircling his head. “Man alive, this thing gives me the worst headache.” He carefully pushed up, and as fresh blood poured from newly opened wounds, the crown came free. He tossed it aside, and it landed next to the two stakes.
The statue, sucking wind, looked down at me. “This is where I could really use your help, James.”
His words ripped through me, snapping me to attention, and in a daze, I found myself warily floating up to him.
“I don’t bite, James,” he said, and gave me a lopsided smile. His lips, I saw, were badly split, and some of his bottom teeth were broken near the gums. He motioned to the nail driven through his feet. “I could probably pull it out myself, but, well, my back is seriously killing me.”
I nodded dumbly and reached for the nail head and wondered how much I could truly help, since I was a ghost.
“Just do your best, James,” he said.
I nodded dumbly again and took hold of the nail—and noticed I had solidified enough to wrap both hands around its head. Bracing my bare feet on either side of the cross, I pulled with all my strength, and as I pulled, it slowly came free. Warm blood poured over my knuckles.
Warm blood. On my knuckles.
As I continued to pull, Jesus Christ braced his arms against the thick wooden crossbeam, holding himself up, grunting through clenched teeth. His legs, I saw, were crisscrossed with raw, open wounds. Lash marks.
I pulled with all my strength, grunting myself. And when the nail finally came free, blood sprayed in a crimson arch, glinting in the multicolored morning light shining in through the stained-glass windows.
My God.
The iron spike, slick with blood, slipped from my fingers and bounced and rolled and came to rest next to the others.
“Thank you,” said the man, or statue, in front of me. I looked up into his face; he winked at me. “You’re a real lifesaver.” He then gave me another lopsided grin and dropped down from the cross. He landed loudly on the raised stage.
I drifted down from the cross while he spent a few moments bending and stretching his back. As he did so, something caught his eye in the far corner of the room.
“Wait here, James. I’ll be back in a moment.”
For someone who had been hanging around for unknown decades, he moved surprisingly well—and even looked pretty good in a loincloth.
Crisscrossing his back were dozens of open wounds.
Cat-o’-nine-tails.
Some of the torn flesh was literally flapping free with each step. But if he was in any pain, he didn’t show it.
He walked swiftly over to the far corner of the chapel, until he stood directly beneath the three red-eyed sentries. The beings, which were shifting agitatedly high above, watched him restlessly, churning, moving in and over each other, their red eyes flashing warily. Where one began and another ended was nearly impossible to tell. Christ—or, more accurately, t
he living statue of Christ—spoke to them. What he said, I didn’t know, but it seemed to calm them down.
They slowed their fidgeting, then stopped altogether.
He said something else to them, and they looked at each other, and I knew they were silently conferring together. They came to some sort of decision, because a moment later, a single shadowed being emerged from The One and crawled tentatively down from the wall.
I watched, stunned. Never had I seen the brothers separate.
And when he was just above Christ’s head, he stopped and reached out a shadowed hand from the wall…
Christ reached up and took it, and when the two hands were together, something miraculous happened. That is, something else miraculous happened on a night of a thousand miracles.
The shadowed hand turned into a very real hand. And the shadowed being turned into the brilliantly glowing spirit of a real man. A bald man wearing a long, flowing robe. A robe that was riddled with bullet holes.
My God.
Still holding Christ’s hand, the monk drifted down from the wall and immediately buried his face in Christ’s shoulder, sobbing uncontrollably as Christ hugged him tightly.
In that moment, the golden tunnel appeared in the ceiling above. It glowed invitingly, serenely, and I watched as dozens of spirits emerged from it, surrounding Christ and the monk. One of the spirits, a young man—the fourth brother, perhaps—covered in what appeared to be splashes of paint, embraced the monk in a massive bear hug. When they separated, another spirit, a middle-aged woman, took the monk gently by the hand and led him up to the tunnel in the ceiling.
The monk never looked back, and a moment later, he was gone.
Christ repeated the process with the next brother; a moment later, a slightly taller monk was standing before Christ. After a deep hug of his own, this second monk was led away as well.
After the third and final monk had been led off, the portal in the ceiling disappeared, along with the dozens of spirits.
“That went rather well,” said Jesus Christ, looking up, hands on his hips. He then turned to me and said, “We need to talk, James.”
We sat together in the front pew.
It was still early morning, and the three red-eyed spirits were gone. The place felt oddly empty without them creeping above. Jacob was still off playing somewhere, probably in one of the empty classrooms.
“Indeed,” said Christ. “In fact, he’s sitting in his old classroom now, pretending to be a student, although sometimes he really thinks he is a student, and wonders where the other kids are.”
“How do you know this?” I asked.
Christ smiled patiently at me. “It’s easy to do, James, once you know how.”
“What’s easy to do?”
“Being dead,” he said. “Although, I would argue that you are very much not dead. Anyway, it has its advantages.”
“Death has its advantages?” I asked.
“Sure.”
“Such as?”
“Well, knowing where others are at all times, for one. Being connected to anyone and everyone you wish to be connected to.”
“I wish to be connected to my daughter,” I said. “But I’m not.”
“You are. You just don’t know it yet.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You have chosen to experience death in this…limited manner,” Christ said.
“What limited manner?”
“As what you call a ‘ghost.’”
I thought about that. “So I can choose another way?”
“You can choose any way you want.”
Morning sunlight crept over the pews. Some of the light found his right leg and revealed clearly his many deep wounds. I looked away. I still hadn’t asked him who the hell he really was, although I seriously doubted he was Christ.
I mean, come on, he was just a statue, wasn’t he?
I looked up at the cross on the wall. At the empty cross.
Yeah, I’m going insane.
“No, you’re not,” said Christ, reading my thoughts. “And don’t be so hard on yourself.”
“But I just watched a statue come to life,” I said. “I just watched you come to life. I think I’m entitled to some crazy talk.”
“Hey, and I’m sitting next to a ghost. Maybe we’re both a little nuts.”
Despite myself, I laughed. He did, too. His laughter was rich and booming, and as he laughed, more blood poured free from his many open wounds.
“You’re bleeding all over the pew,” I said.
He looked down. “So I am.”
I looked at the lash marks covering his legs and torso. “Are you in pain?”
“I’m in whatever I choose to be in,” he said. “And if I choose to be in pain, then, yes, I imagine I would be in considerable pain.”
I needed some real answers or I was seriously going to lose it. “Were you or were you not just a statue?”
“I chose to be something that would get your attention,” he said. “And I think I have succeeded.”
“Are you really Jesus Christ?”
“For the sake of simplicity, I will just say yes.”
“And what’s the complicated answer?” I asked.
“I have been called many things by many people in many languages, throughout time and space, for eons upon eons—”
“Okay, let’s stick with the simple answer.”
He smiled, nodded. As he did so, beads of blood worked free from his damaged scalp and dribbled down into his ear.
“Is there any way we can get you to stop bleeding?” I asked. “I find it very distracting.”
He smiled and nodded again, and by the time he was done nodding, his body had completely healed. Even the blood that had stained the carpet around his feet was gone.
“So you really are Jesus Christ?” I asked. “Please. Just the simple answer.”
“The simple answer—of course, James.”
“The same Jesus Christ I worshipped as a child?”
“The one and only.”
“Are you really the son of God?” I asked.
“We are all children of God,” he said. “Although some of us are, let’s just say, older children of God.”
I think I understood. “And you are an older child. Perhaps the oldest of them all.”
He smiled easily. “Old or young, James, we are all sons and daughters of the Creator.”
The church was quiet, a rarity for this time of day. Perhaps there was some divine intervention going on here. Christ sat motionless next to me, although his chest rose and fell steadily. He was solid, real. Me, not so solid.
“Am I going to hell?” I asked suddenly.
He turned his head slowly, and I could feel the palpable weight of his stare on me. I could feel his love, too. But I also felt something else coming from him.
Sadness.
“I’m sorry, James,” he said gently. “But, yes, you are going straight to hell.”
A door opened somewhere. Probably the morning maintenance crew going about their job. Or Jacob doing a hell of a good job of haunting up the place.
“So that’s it, then,” I said.
“I’m afraid so, yes.”
“Is it as bad as they say?”
“Worse.”
“Fuck,” I said. “Sorry.”
“Cuss all you want, my friend. You’ve reached the point where it really doesn’t matter anymore.”
“So I’m beyond help?”
“Yes. Again, I’m sorry.”
“So basically I could sin all I want—”
“Right. And it wouldn’t matter.”
“Fuck.”
“Yes, that’s the spirit.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
A moment later, after my little tirade, we sat together in silence. Had I been in the flesh, my chest would have been heaving.
Christ said, “Bob didn’t deserve what you did to him.”
“Bob?” I asked distractedly; after all, my thoug
hts were on flames and torture and eternal damnation.
“Ponytail,” he said.
“Oh, him,” I said dismissively.
But Christ pushed on. “He’s a real piece of work, I know, but he’s coming along. Making some great progress, truly evolving.”
“Look, Jesus. I mean no disrespect, but I could give a damn—”
But Christ plunged forward, cutting me off. “He has a girl dying of cancer. Bob really needs this job, and he really needs this show to be a hit. If this show takes off, he can give his little girl the care she’s going to need.”
“And that’s an excuse for him acting like an asshole?” I asked.
“Yes and no,” said Christ.
But my mind was still on burning beds, burning caves, burning devils laughing at my misery. I thought of pain. Eternal pain.
“If I’m going to hell,” I said, changing the subject, “then I’d rather stay here, in this church, and lose my mind.”
“That’s your choice, too,” said Christ.
“Good. Then that’s what I choose.”
“So be it,” said Christ.
“Just like that?” I said.
“Yes, just like that.”
We were silent some more, but I found his words tumbling through my nonskull. “Wait. You said I could choose to experience death any way I want.”
“I did indeed.”
“But you also just said I was going straight to hell.”
“And you were, until you just decided otherwise. I believe your choice was to haunt this church and lose your mind. Admittedly, it wouldn’t be my first choice, but to each his own.”
“Then why did you say I was going to hell?” I asked.
“Because you were going to hell, James. You had already condemned yourself there.”
“I don’t understand.”
“In death, the soul experiences what the soul wants to experience.”
“But I didn’t want to go to hell.”
“True enough. But you condemned yourself there anyway.”
“But I was told there was a heaven and a hell.”
“You were told wrong.”
