Eternal (19 page)

He hesitated, chewing his mouthful of burger carefully, then said slowly, “I would say that I believe you.”

“Really?”

He swallowed and grimaced as if a piece of meat had stuck in his throat. “I’d also say that’s pretty … strange.” His eyes stared into hers, Pierre’s eyes. “But you and I have been having the same dreams of the same events. Last night, I had a horrific nightmare that I had been, um, emasculated. In these dreams—that are more real than anything I have ever experienced—I am in love with a woman named Heloise.”

“What I saw written all over your notepad.”

“I thought at first that it might have been the power of suggestion. But then I did some research on Abelard’s life, and the events matched my dreams—exactly.

“Julia,” he continued. “Do you know what this means? We are those people. I can barely wrap my head around it, but there it is. Staring me in the face—a truth that, as much as I try, I cannot deny.”

Julia listened to Austin with mouth agape. Austin had eloquently articulated the rudimentary thoughts bobbling around in her mind. She hadn’t dared hope that he would believe her. But here he was, affirming her deepest desires, her deepest fears. And as she heard them spoken out loud, she knew them to be true.

“Austin—” her thought was cut short by a sudden realization. “You are in terrible danger. Fulbert is back.”

T
WENTY-
O
NE

A
ustin and Julia stood by his car for a moment. He faced her, ran a hand down each of her arms until he reached her hands, and then entwined his fingers with hers. He seemed reluctant to leave her. Her eyes darted around the parking lot, wondering if anyone was watching. It all felt so familiar, saying goodbye, worrying that to love him risked both their lives, realizing that she couldn’t stop even if she tried.

“Do you ever have déjà vu?” she asked. When he gave her a rueful smile, she added, “I mean during the day.”

In lieu of an answer, he gave her a lingering kiss, and then said, “I’d have to say yes. That definitely felt familiar. But let me try again, just to make sure.”

But this time, as he leaned in to kiss her, a fist crashed down on top of his car, jolting the two out of their intimate moment. It was Tyler. Rob and Carter were standing behind him. Julia froze. Austin and Tyler stepped toward each other, toe-to-toe, and looked each other up and down. Tyler’s eyes were violent, and the veins in his neck were popping out of his skin. Julia noticed he was at least three inches taller than Austin, his chest broader. But, although Austin didn’t have the massive physique of a college athlete in training, he was solid and muscular. She had a feeling he was more than Tyler’s match. Still, she didn’t want to see either of them hurt. Feeling responsible, she leaped between them.

“What are you doing, Tyler? Have you totally lost it? He’s a cop.”

“Then he should know that stealing is illegal,” he said, without taking his eyes off Austin. “Buddy, you seem to be kissing someone who belongs to me.”

“I’m not property,” Julia said.

“No, but you
are
my girl.” He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her behind him.

“Tyler, we broke up.”

“You mean our little argument? You didn’t mean it.” He turned to Austin. “But tell me, cop. What kind of girl breaks up with a guy on the phone?”

“You’re the one who broke up over the phone. But if you want to do it again in person, I can accommodate you. We’re over!” She tried to yank her arm out of his hand, but he only squeezed tighter.

Austin put a hand to the gun at his hip. “Julia said her piece. Now calm down and let her go.”

“What are you gonna do, cop? Arrest me?”

“I can do just that, if you don’t keep your hands to yourself. It’s called assault. Julia told you she doesn’t want to see you. Why not accept it like a man? Surely you’re not so desperate that you want a girlfriend who’s not interested?” Austin turned and looked at the two guys behind Tyler, reminding him that people were watching.

Rob looked at Tyler. “C’mon, man. Why waste your time on some science slut who runs around with other guys? She’s hot, but she’s not that hot.”

Tyler turned to his friends again. “Come on, let’s get out of here.” He started to walk away, and then paused to turn and look at Julia again. “Goodbye, Julia. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Julia turned toward the front of the burger joint, where Britney, Kate, and a crowd of girls stood, staring. Nadia wasn’t there. “Oh, Tyler,” Britney said. “I can’t believe she dissed you like that. That just wasn’t right.” She put a hand on Tyler’s shoulder and followed him and his buddies back into the restaurant, turning to glare at Julia before the door shut behind them all.

Julia turned away from them, stung, when out of the corner of her eye, she saw a human shape lingering in the shadows at the far side of the restaurant. Though it was hard to tell in the dark, the silhouette seemed intent on watching the group of teens returning inside. She gripped Austin’s arm; but by the time he looked up, the lurker had slipped away.

She watches, wrists and ankles bound securely to the chair. She is gagged so thoroughly that not a sound escapes her throat. Her nightgown is ripped to bloody shreds, exposing her to the night’s chill wafting through the corridor.

Six men force Pierre’s arms to the two upper posts of the bed and secure them with rope, cutting into the skin of his wrists. He has no way of knowing yet exactly what they plan to do. Flay his skin off? Draw out his intestines? He does not fear death but recoils from the thought of torture. The small, wiry one has a large knife, and if they only meant to stab him to death, surely they would have done so already and been done with it.

Pierre kicks so frantically, it takes longer to tie his legs to the lower two bedposts. By the time he’s completely restrained, his wrists are torn, and the ropes drip with blood. His ankles will soon look the same. They’re already red and raw where he strains against the ropes.

He screams until his voice is hoarse. Then he calms his breath and pleads, “Have mercy on me, and kill me quickly. I understand that I will now die for my sins. I beg you, do not add to yours.”

“Shut up!” the small one shouts and backhands him hard across the face. The man’s right eye twitches, an old half-moon scar stretched underneath it. Surely someone heard that loud blow, that shout, those screams—any moment now they’ll come running to help. But no one is coming. A tear slides down her cheek, unheeded.

The men slap him across the face. Never hard enough to knock him unconscious, though she wishes they would, for his sake. Pierre’s white cotton nightshirt, immaculate a few minutes before, is now covered in blood. Even so, his nightclothes contrast greatly with the dirty coarse brown tunics worn by his assailants—poor men willing to kill to put food in their bellies. She wonders if they have families.

Pierre grows exhausted and pauses in his struggle, his breaths coming in great gasping sobs. Still, he is dignified—beautiful to her, not only in body, but in mind and spirit. A man of education, and faith, and depths of love that none of these men has likely ever known. He deserves better.

The small one struts toward him, clutching the knife, baring his jagged rotting teeth. A predator. He lifts Pierre’s shirt and presses knife to skin. Pierre’s final agonized scream rips through the night, echoing down the centuries.

Pierre’s groin and legs are drenched in blood, and a low moan escapes his cracked lips. She can feel the cold dampness, see the oppressive darkness lit only by a single candle carried by one of the men.

The predator walks into the faint circle of candlelight, still holding the bloody knife. He wipes it on his shirt until the sharp edge gleams in the pale light. He leans into Pierre’s face and says in a parody of nobility and grace, “I hear you’re a teacher. So now you’ve learned a very good lesson, I think. Don’t go poking your manhood where it doesn’t belong.”

The men laugh.

The biggest, beefiest one snarls, “It’s tempting to draw and quarter you.” He points at the predator. “Little Tibaut here is excellent in that department.”

“No. Old Canon gave strict instructions,” Tibaut says. “How will you show him what a good student you are if we kill you after the lesson? I hear you’re a religious man. You should thank us for making you perfect for the priesthood. You’ll find celibacy easy now.”

The men laugh again, cackling like old women, and begin to leave. Tibaut turns toward Pierre one last time and winks. The half-moon scar in the candlelight appears to be a third, evil eye that turns its gaze upon the lovers and condemns them to their doom.

T
WENTY-
T
WO

J
ulia left her dad’s house at first light and headed to the lab to pick up the last of her personal belongings. There was no telling when Bertel would be back to himself or back to work, if ever. He was the one who received the funding for their work. Without him, there was no more grant. The project was, for the moment, dead.

She walked to the opposite side of the street, where Jack was parked, and told him where she was going. Jack argued with her and called Austin. But she was determined, so Jack followed behind her.

As she drove through the quiet Dana Point neighborhood toward the freeway, she was so lost in thought that she missed her turn. She continued on the side streets until she passed the old stone cathedral where her mother used to take her to school when she was a girl—before Julia let her father persuade her that it was all superstitious nonsense. A black-bearded man wearing a beige linen shirt and khakis was standing in the garden between the church and the rectory. He could have been thirty or fifty; it was hard to tell at this distance. He appeared to be cutting roses. He looked up and waved at her as she slowed at the intersection.

She waved back, which distracted her as she shifted gears. She didn’t fully engage the clutch, which caused the car to lurch and die. Another car pulled up behind her, and the driver laid on the horn. As she started her car up again, the other car pulled around her and sped through the intersection, burning rubber. She saw a teen driver gesticulating and shouting at her in a silent pantomime behind the glass. For some reason, the image of that angry teen, his face distorted with pointless rage, made her unusually distraught.

As her car’s engine turned over, the gardener caught her eye again, and he grinned at her. Then he did a double take, as if he recognized her. The clippers he’d been using to cut the roses fell from his grasp as he continued to gape. He took a step forward and beckoned her. Flustered, she grew clumsy with the clutch again and sent the car lurching to another stall. This time when she started the engine, she engaged the left turn signal and made a U-turn into the church parking lot.

As she stepped out of the car, she looked up at the tower on the church’s south end. It was topped with an intricately chiseled iron cross. She’d once told her mother that she wished all the crosses
inside
the church looked like that one: “It’s almost like a plus sign, and pluses are positive. But inside, the crosses are all just torture devices, with Jesus suffering on them. It freaks me out.” That had been when she was eleven, the year she’d stopped going. Now here she was again, staring up at the big plus sign, trying to stay positive. She passed the tiled fountain that gurgled in front of the entrance and walked toward the garden, but the gardener was gone. She stood on the bright green lawn for a moment and turned in a circle. He was nowhere to be seen.

Puzzled, she walked up the steps toward the heavy wooden doors of the church. As she pulled one of the doors open, she felt a sudden heaviness, as if something powerful were pushing her backward. At the same time, something else more powerful pushed her forward. She stumbled inside and blinked as the door slammed shut behind her, blotting out the bright sunny day behind her and leaving her in a sort of twilight.

Jesus and an anonymous crowd of saints and angels gazed down at her from the towering, candy-colored light of stained glass. She stepped up to a font, wet her fingers with the holy water, and made the sign of the cross. Then she stepped into the long nave, her shuffling footsteps echoing in the empty space, even though she was wearing running shoes. Behind the altar, two huge columns supported a high-arched alcove, where cherubim fluttered on tiny wings. She genuflected as she entered a pew, because it was what she’d done the last time she was here, but she thought actually kneeling to pray might seem hypocritical. She hadn’t, after all, nurtured her spirituality for nearly a decade. Instead, she sat and guessed the height and diameter of the columns, then mentally calculated their volume and weight based on the material: granite, marble, and cement.

She didn’t finish her calculations, as once again her eyes felt compelled by the image of Jesus bleeding on the cross from nailed hands and feet, rent side, and thorn-crowned head. Yet the image didn’t upset her as much as it used to. In fact, she found it comforting. It reminded her of her mother. She thought she smelled her mom’s French perfume, but then it became the smell of roses as a door opened in a side alcove.

She turned toward the smell, and there was the gardener again; this time, he was wearing a black shirt, black pants, and the clerical collar of a priest. His pale blue eyes squinted into the dimness of the church, studying her. Then he nodded, as if his study confirmed something. Without a word, he beckoned to her again before he disappeared through the doorway from which he had come.

He must think I’m someone else,
Julia thought. She rose to follow him through the doorway, which opened into a respectable-sized library with packed bookshelves from floor to ceiling. The priest stood atop a rolling wooden ladder, reaching for a book on a high shelf. The smells of old wood flooring, wax, and moldy paper made Julia feel transported back in time. The smell of roses struck her again. The source was real enough: clipped white and maroon roses sitting in a vase on a small side table between two overstuffed leather chairs.

On the wall behind the roses hung two paintings. One was a flat medieval depiction of a man in monastic robes sitting next to a woman in a nun’s habit. The other showed a young man and woman sharing a tender embrace, him cupping her head with one hand as an older man wearing a black cape opened the door behind them. Julia’s heart raced as she recognized Fulbert, furious at catching Heloise and Abelard in an intimate moment. Both paintings were suffused with a sepia glow. Her skin felt damp with fear and yearning, and for a moment she felt dizzy with the sensation of being pulled into the painting. She’d seen these images on the Internet, but at this size it was even clearer that, allowing latitude for artistic interpretation, the couple portrayed looked very much like her and Austin.

She started at the feeling of a hand on her shoulder. “Those are reproductions, of course. But they are beautiful, aren’t they?” The priest’s voice was warm, soothing.

“Yes, they are.”

“You know who they are?”

“Yes, I do. Kind of an odd subject for display in a church, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps.” He set a large book on the table next to the roses. “But an argument can be made for the very real faith Abelard and Heloise possessed, the sinful cruelty that separated a man and wife, and their steadfast service to the Church despite the many reasons they had to turn their back on Her. The diocese doesn’t seem to mind my hobby, so long as I restrict it to the library.” He held out his hand. “I’m Father Anselm.”

“I’m … Julia.”

He gestured to the chair behind her. “Please have a seat, Julia. Can I get you something to drink? Water? Wine?”

“Water, please.”

“Of course.” He walked into another room and returned with two tall glasses, one filled with water, another with ruby liquid. “Please excuse me. I think I’ll be needing the wine to calm my nerves.” He wasn’t kidding. The glass of water shook as he handed it to her. “You’ll forgive me. I’ve seen your face so many times, but seeing it up close is—astonishing.”

“Seen my face where?” she asked.

He pointed at the second painting. “Up there.” Then he sat down in the chair opposite hers and pointed at his own head. “And in here. I’ve had visions about you all my life, Heloise.”

“Julia.”

“Right, Julia. But you must know by now that there’s more to you than that, or you wouldn’t be here.” “Why am I here?”

He nodded. “I’ve been waiting a long time to talk to someone about that very thing. So many church leaders wish to see miracles and mysteries in modern times. Yet when a lone priest claims to have visions, he’s more likely to get the attention of a psychiatrist than the bishop. So I’ve kept my secrets secret. I have an ability. Some might call it a gift, others a curse. It is a gift for seeing the forgotten past, the hidden present, the unknown future. But the visions almost always seem to come back to these two.” He gestured at the paintings with his glass.

She rubbed her arms, which were covered with goose bumps. “What do you see in these visions?”

“I have seen the past through the eyes of the old man, Fulbert. I know what no historian has ever proven, though some have speculated: He lusted for his own niece to the point of madness. Because of that lust, he destroyed her life and her husband’s—two of the brightest minds the world has known.

“I have seen Abelard and Heloise find each other again in the present. Through the grace of God, and because of the goodness of their souls, they were given another chance to be together. From the underworld, Fulbert has watched his niece’s return to earth with jealousy, wanting her, wanting life, hating everyone she loves, hating everyone who loves her. He’s longed to find a way back to this mortal plane and back to her. Imagine his delight when she and her mentor discovered a way to shock the soul in and out of the body at will.”

Julia bolted out of her chair, knocking her glass to the threadbare Persian throw rug at their feet. “How did you … Who are you?”

“Don’t be afraid, Julia. God does not give these gifts for entertainment. I knew He must have a purpose for showing me what I’ve seen. I am here to help you. I remember you, you know. I came here after Seminary school, and I saw you and your mother here. I thought I recognized you even then, but I didn’t dare speak. You were such a skeptical child, always challenging Father Pete: ‘What does God care if I take His name in vain? I don’t care if he uses my name to swear with. If Jesus was from the Middle East, why is he always blond and blue-eyed in pictures?’ I never heard a girl ask so many questions.” He grinned and shook his head; and as his face relaxed, Julia realized he was younger than she’d thought. “I was sorry you stopped coming. But when I was assigned here as parish priest, I knew you’d be back.”

“Why?”

“In my visions, I have also seen the future and its possibilities. The future is always shifting, so my visions are tentative, uncertain. Only one vision has kept me up so many nights that I often look like a tired old man, even though I’m only thirty-three.” He took a sip of wine, looked at his feet, ran a toe across the rug, and looked up at her. “In that vision, I see people returning from the dead. These dreams don’t come when I sleep, mind you, but by day. They feel as real as you and me sitting here right now. When I saw you on the street just now, the vision hit me again, with more force than ever.”

Her shoulders sagged, afraid that Father Anselm had foreseen what she feared—that Fulbert would figure out how to bring back a legion of souls from the dead. “What do you mean, ‘returning from the dead’?”

Father Anselm misunderstood her question. “These aren’t zombies. They’re not dead bodies brought back to grotesque, shambling life. These are ordinary living people whose bodies have been invaded by evil souls.” He placed his hand on the book he’d taken down from the shelf, an old tome with a faded leather cover, its title barely legible:
Divine Tragedy.
He flipped it open to a dog-eared page and turned it to face her. She read first to herself, then aloud:

“Satan’s purpose is simple: to gain ground in the war against Heaven for dominion over all souls in the universe. On earth, Satan’s servants seek to terrorize the opposition by seizing human bodies. Widescale possessions could force the final battle between good and evil. Yet, so far, possessions have proven limited in duration and in number, due to inefficient transmission. Demons rely on extreme weakness: physical and mental illness, drug and alcohol addiction, troubled families, disaffected youth. Even under such conditions, humans can regain control of their bodies with the help of others through love, prayer, or exorcism. Meanwhile, corpse possession is unsustainable, making second incarnations brief and unproductive.”