Fires Rising (3 page)

He opened his eyes.

And saw bones—
human
bones—jutting from the ground.

He skittered away in a panic, grabbing the flashlight. A cloud of dust rose up around him. He aimed the flashlight around and saw in the wavering beam a long line of skeletons—complete ribcages; leg bones smattered with bits of gristle and rotted flesh; skulls with snarled clumps of hair still attached, disconnected form their backbones.

Decapitated.

I saw them being buried in my dreams. But…there are more here than what I saw. What is this?

He moved the beam away from the graveyard of bones and focused it ahead.

Here he saw a solid wall of fill, the lower strata of the church's foundation open like a wound: asphalt and cement layered over brick and soil. Here is where he workers would lay a new cement foundation. He shined the beam across the fill and saw what appeared to be a wooden crate protruding from the lower layer of soil. He shook his head, gathered his composure and struggled to his feet. Taking a deep breath, he stepped toward the crate. The aged bones in the soil crunched beneath his weight.

Using just his fingers, he began to dig away at the hard earth packed around the crate. He worked gingerly at first, but then excavated more furiously as his heart began to pound with inexplicable excitement—as his mind burned with a rampant desire to explore the crate's unknown contents.

Something is calling me, and I must follow…

He cleared more and more of the surrounding soil away. The box…it seemed to grow warm…or maybe it was just his head playing with him. Regardless, he worked and worked at it for an indeterminate amount of time until a chunk of earth below the crate broke off, allowing it to fall free from the tomb that had kept it a secret since the founders in his dream buried it there over a hundred years ago.

He gripped the edge of the crate and jerked his hands away in pain. It
was hot
. He scratched the gruff on his face. Then, like a child cooling soup, blew upon the surface. Dust burst up in a cloud, assaulting his nose and making him cough.

He retrieved the flashlight and angled it at the top of the crate. The wood appeared to be petrified. It was branded with foreign words on all sides. He brushed away as much of the soil as he could, but couldn't make any sense of the writing.

He whispered as he read: "
Castigo laudible, corpus meum…"
An odd disquiet washed over him.

Using one hand, he wedged his fingers beneath the edge of the lid, which had come loose. With a grunt, he yanked it off.
That was too easy
, he thought, feeling as if something ghostly had aided him.

He slid the lid off the crate, let it fall to the ground.

He aimed the flashlight's beam inside.

His heart leaped in his throat and a heavy weight bore down on his chest, making it difficult to breathe.
My God…
And yet there seemed no logical reason at the moment to be so frightened at what he saw inside the crate: two very ordinary-looking burlap cloths, stiff and tattered.

He reached for one of the cloths. Gently, he pinched it between two fingers.

Laden with dry-rot, it crumbled into pieces. A heady sea-salt odor rose up as a string of wooden charms slipped free of the cloth, into his hand.

He cleared bits of the rotten cloth away from the charms. Yes, he knew what this was. His mother used to carry one everywhere she went.
It's a string of rosary beads. But…it's different than the one my mother had: these beads are larger, as big as marbles. The cross is almost the size of my index finger. And what are these oddly-shaped trinkets that look like stars?

He allowed the beads to cascade through his fingers. His body shuddered at their nearly tangible offer of otherworldly comfort: they were warm to the touch,
human
warm, appearing to glide about his groping hands like a skittering insect investigating unfamiliar environs.

Quickly, he shoved the beads into his left pocket.

He peered back inside the crate.

The other burlap bag was moving, as though a mouse or a large insect were fighting its way out from beneath it.

Jyro reached for it. It stopped its undulations and he jerked his hand away, gooseflesh bolting across his back.

He stared at it a few seconds. Then, ever so slowly, reached for it again.

A splay of red light burst out from below the shred of burlap. Now frightened, Jyro flinched back against the hard wall of the ditch. He coughed, holding an arm up, wincing as something heavy turned in his stomach.

A tiny flame burst from the burlap bag, swallowing it up. Black ashes and glowing embers fluttered up like moths, revealing what appeared to be a goblet, or chalice in the crate.

Leaning forward, Jyro could see that it was perhaps eight inches high, black and glossy, with a coat of shiny, smoldering residue. Like a magician's assistant, it slowly floated up out of the crate, into the air, emitting the same soft red glow he'd seen emerging from beneath the burlap cloth just moments earlier.

Unmoving, Jyro could only stare at it wide-eyed and dumbfounded as it climbed to a height of ten or twelve feet. The seconds passed, and the chalice grew darker, its outermost edges turning nearly black, like onyx. In the center of the chalice he could see etchings similar to those on the surface of the crate.

The red light grew brighter around it, the chalice itself a turbulent focal point swelling before his eyes, like a great pupil focused solely on
him
.

The room grew hotter. Sweat burst from his brow as fear and anxiety roiled in his blood. Frightened, he shoved the flashlight into his pants, then with a gasp stepped onto edge the crate and gripped the sheared perimeter of the wooden floor. He hoisted himself up, feet scrambling against the exposed bricks, fingers digging into soil, face in the dirt, hands cramping as he pulled himself up over the edge of the hole, onto the dusty floor. Quickly, he climbed to his feet and scampered to the room's entrance, where he grabbed the doorjamb and peered over his shoulder to look at the chalice again.

It floated far above the hole: a widening pinpoint in the aura of red light still aimed at him,
looking
at him.

From within, a din of raging fires surfaced. It filled his ears with dense pressure that dulled his shouts. A wind sprung up, stinking of rot and sulfur, assailing him physically and shoving him back into the hallway.

He looked around wildly, back and forth, up and down. He staggered away, tailing the flashlight's beam back into the dark lobby. When his breath returned, he released a sharp gasp and looked back down the hallway. Red light spilled out of the rec room, illuminating the once dark hallway as though a fire were raging nearby.

He fled up the steps to the second-floor landing, where he collapsed breathlessly onto the threadbare carpet, trying to rid the image of the floating chalice from his head.

These will help me
, he thought, seeking out the rosary beads in his pocket.
 
Hands trembling, he gripped them tightly, staring at them with awe and wonder and the want of salvation from the dark event he just witnessed.

They are beautiful, and they will protect me as my mother's beads protected her until the day of her death, all those years ago
.

He grasped them into a tight ball, thoughts focused solely upon the calming magic they seemed to possess. Exhausted, he lay down on the carpeted landing and stared into the darkness, listening to his heart pounding, feeling his skin tingle.

Soon, sleep took him, and in his dreams he could vaguely hear in his dark dreams his own voice repeating the same phrase over and over again:
"The evil that promises man the end of days."

B
lue skies.

Proud sun.

Warm breeze.

The weather in Manhattan could have been described as joyful, and those basking in its noontime brilliance echoed it with generous smiles. Traffic was flowing smoothly, devoid of impatient horn-honking. Perched in the branches of trees growing amid square cut-outs in the cement sidewalks, birds fluttered and chirped, seemingly jealous of those brave pigeons pecking at the feet of passing pedestrians.

Two middle-aged men met on 78
^th
Street before the entrance to the Church of St. Peter. One of them was a priest, the other a construction foreman. Each was approximately the same age, of the same build and height and perhaps ethnic background. But that's where the similarities ended.

"This way, Father."

The construction foreman, wearing a yellow hardhat, held the orange construction tape up to allow Father Anthony Pilazzo to pass below. The priest leaned down, the bones in his forty-three year-old body creaking as he conducted the once undemanding feat with difficulty.
Perhaps now would be a good time to start exercising again
, he thought, knowing that finding time for such a simple routine would be as trouble-free as performing a service for a church full of Satanists.

He leaned back up and eyed the Church Of Saint Peter, its crumbling face more obvious now that its demise was in order. The once-red bricks were faded and chipped, dusty gray innards showing like open sores. The facing of the public announcement board was shattered, the majority of its plastic letters lying on the sidewalk below like discarded cigarette butts. What had originally read
I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind but now I see
now read
new stud slut
in a disconcerting stagger of letters: the simpleminded brainstorm of some moronic passerby.

Pilazzo shook his head and adjusted his priest's collar as perspiration trickled its way beneath. Taking a deep breath and tasting the grit of cement and sawdust, he buried his hands in the pockets of his black trousers. "One hundred and fifteen years. What a crying shame."

The foreman flattened his lips and narrowed his eyes in a struggle to feign compassion. He slid the hardhat back on his head, revealing a sweaty brow.

He looks nervous
, Pilazzo sensed.
Why would he show nervousness? All he has to do is tear the church down, then build it back up, addressing the gluttonous ways of corporate America.

"I've never been the religious type Father, but I can certainly relate to your disappointment. My wife and I had to give up our home after her company transferred her to New York last year. Toughest thing we'd ever had to do, especially with the kids going to a new school and all. Only recently have we begun to feel comfortable in our new surroundings."

In the tree immediately behind Pilazzo, a troop of perched sparrows tossed their tuneful song into the air. "It's much harder than you can imagine. It's like watching my own parent being led into the execution chamber, as morbid as that sounds."

The foreman smirked, making no clear effort to suppress his lack of compassion for Pilazzo's situation.

Pilazzo shook his head. "With all due respect, Mr.…I'm sorry, what was your name again?"

"Henry. Henry Miller."

"Yes, Mr. Miller." He pointed to the edifice and jerked his wrist a half dozen times, as if bullets might start firing from his index finger." This church has been here since the turn of the century. It was built by our grandfathers, the priests and parishioners themselves, back in 1892. Every column, every pew, every sliver of stained glass, paid for, manufactured, and erected by the hands of those who worshipped and lived in its walls. There's a history here that could never be duplicated. And now corporate America has brought its fist down hard on one of the few truly historical catholic components this city still has to offer. It's a terrible disgrace, Mr. Miller, an injustice to the catholic religion."

Henry Miller's eyebrows furrowed above a deadpan face, marking his disinterest in Pilazzo's plight. "I don't disagree with you, Father. But I have a job to do here, ya know?"

Pilazzo continued, the words spilling from his mouth ungoverned: "What took our forefathers a year to build, will take your crew a couple of days to tear down. A few months from now, in this thirty foot wedge of space between office building number one and office building number two, office building number three will stand with the money-hungry lawyers resting comfortably in the top floor, overseeing the contracts between the foam-jawed landlords and their kennel of leasers. It's all about the money, and nothing more." He paused, swallowed past the grit in his throat and added, "No one cares about God anymore."

Miller aimed his dark eyes toward the dusty sidewalk. Lunch-hour pedestrians paced busily along the curb, clear of the construction tape, oblivious to the fact—and not really caring—that a hundred and fifteen year-old church was about to be torn down.

Pilazzo brushed by him and stepped across the sidewalk toward the five steps leading up into the church. He placed his right foot on the bottom step and stared into the darkness beyond the open half of the twin doors.

A breeze sprung up, carrying with it a cloud of dust that circled into the church's gloomy depths. It doubled back, tossing bits of debris against Pilazzo's face. He closed his eyes and coughed away the invading grit. Behind him, the lone tree's leaves rustled. When he opened his eyes, the afternoon sun caught the chrome edge of the closed left door, causing a pinpoint glare to pierce his eyes. He moved aside, realizing that all the sparrows in the tree had ceased their tuneful chirping.