The Blessed (26 page)

“Judge not, that you may not be judged,” Agnes whispered.

Lucy reached for her ears.

Agnes crawled toward the votive stand, gazing at the low light of the candle flame and stretched her hand out stiffly above it, like a curious child over a hot stove. She lowered it gradually, drops of Cecilia’s still-fresh blood dripping from her hand into the candle cup and sizzling, until it was perched near enough to the flame to hurt, her long hair near enough to ignite. As the frayed ends began to catch, the acrid smell of burning hair mixed with the rankness of the room.

Through the haze she appeared to Lucy, who was now lying on a mirror bed made of shards, as a pathetic wraith, damned to infinitely repeat a ritual that might one day earn forgiveness for her. Agnes whispered:

“Dinumeraverunt omnia ossa mea.”
⁵

Lucy mustered the strength to grab her heels and put them on to protect her feet from further injury caused by debris, and hobbled over to Agnes. Before she could grab her hand and hair away from the flame, Agnes turned and faced her. She held her hand up, palm facing Lucy, a silent sign to stop where she was.

“You’re sick,” Lucy insisted, hoping to bully some sense into her. “This isn’t you.”

“It is,” Agnes said. “It’s all of us.”

Agnes looked right through her as if she wasn’t there. A thousand-yard stare to cover a matter of inches.

The room was a split screen of pain and suffering, and Lucy didn’t know which way to turn, who to help first when she couldn’t even help herself. She understood how insanity could pounce on even the soundest and sharpest mind, which she always considered to be hers. The closeness of madness was overwhelming and keeping it at bay, a losing battle. Insanity beckoned. She kept telling herself
deep breath,
to put herself back in her body, but she couldn’t manage to take one.

“Seeing is believing,” Agnes mocked and started to giggle, her bloodstained face and hands almost disappearing in the dimness, giving the impression of a headless, limbless torso floating in space. “How do I look?”

“This is supposed to be a holy place!” Lucy cried. But her pleas were stifled by an explosive pain, the worst of them all.
Molten wax from the candelabra rained down, droplets of fire splashing Lucy’s eyes, face, and hair. She was glazed, coated, like a mold. She felt as if her eyelids had been glued closed and her eyes cooked into gooey marbles in their sockets.

Blinded.

Suffocating.

Without mercy.

“I . . . can’t . . . see.”

Her instinct was to rip it away, but she didn’t. Instead she ran her trembling fingers along the cooling ridges of textured mass, the second skin that covered her. She had the sense of molting, but in reverse. Of being encased, like a wick inside one of the tapers, waiting for a match to ignite her, set her aflame and consume her.

Lucy fell to her knees.

Agnes’s recitations became more manic, more urgent.

Pleading.

“Petite et dabitur vobis quaerite et invenietis

pulsate et aperietur vobis.

Omnis enim qui petit accipit et qui quaerit

invenit et pulsanti aperietur.”
⁶

“Sebastian!” CeCe cried desperately with what little strength she had left.

“Somebody, please. Help us!”

Suddenly, a shrill wail from the other side of the chapel pierced the silence.

“God,” Agnes screamed, as if waking from a horrible nightmare, in desperation. “Help us.”

Agnes cried out a final time:

“Adtendite a falsis prophetis qui veniunt ad vos in vestimentis

ovium intrinsecus autem sunt lupi rapaces.”
⁷

The room fell silent as each lost consciousness. They couldn’t be sure how long it was before they came to. Both time and their suffering seemed to have stopped in that very moment.

A hand beneath her head and another clawing at her eyes awoke Lucy. They were Sebastian’s hands. She didn’t need her eyes to tell her that. She heard Agnes and Cecilia coughing and calling out for each other as he gently removed the last bits of wax. At least, she thought, they were alive.

“I’m with you,” he said. “You are with me.”

“Sebastian,” Lucy said, gratefully. “I can see.”

“Up?” the cheery elevator operator asked.

Jesse nodded and stepped in nervously. This elevator cab looked ancient to him. Art deco tiling on the floor and walls, deco lighting fixture attached to the ceiling. Polished brass railings. Reminded him of the elevators in his grandparents’ fancy Park Avenue prewar building, which always smelled vaguely of musty carpet and old people.

Jesse was dripping, his carefully coiffed ’do flattened, puddles forming at his feet. The momentary lull in the storm that had seduced him over to the hospital to meet Dr. Frey in person was nothing more than a meteorological headfake. But even the sudden cloudburst that assaulted him as he approached the hospital lobby couldn’t dampen his curiosity. He had to find out about Lucy.

The operator smiled. “Brought the storm inside with you I see. Floor?”

Jesse was put off, suspicious even. He figured the guy was trained to keep it light for the incoming patients’ benefit. Which was fine, except he wasn’t a patient and wasn’t keen to be seen as or treated as one.

“Top.”

He didn’t know the exact number and couldn’t bring himself to name it.

The operator slid the collapsible gate closed, pushed the car switch forward, and engaged the pulley motor. The cab jerked upward and the operator turned and smiled at him yet again and returned to position, facing forward, watching the elevator car pass floor after floor on the way to the top. He felt as if he’d just been caged and both his claustrophobia and paranoia began to kick in. It didn’t help matters that he was taking a ride to a psych ward. Jesse grabbed the railing and hung on, counting the floors as they passed. From his neurotic behavior he wondered if the elevator guy would take him for a visitor or a patient. It was late after all, well after hours, and with the storm raging, unlikely that anyone but the most desperate headcases would brave the elements. A visit could wait. An appointment could not.

“Penthouse,” the operator announced, sliding the gate open. “Have a nice day, sir.”

Jesse exhaled and jumped off quickly without saying a word. He wasn’t much for chitchat under the best
circumstances and didn’t feel the need to exchange niceties with a hired hand.

The elevator gate swung closed behind him and he stepped cautiously into the waiting area. The shiny floors and the wet soles of his shoes were not a good match. He extended his long arms outward like wings to balance himself as his feet slid treacherously along the slickened linoleum, laughing nervously to himself that if the operator could see him now, he’d have little doubt about Jesse’s mental status. A real live loony bird had just flown into the cuckoo’s nest.

There was no reception desk, just an unmanned nurses’ station. He looked around for help and caught a glimpse of the inmates in the distance, wandering the halls.

It was exactly as he’d imagined it. As he’d feared.

Too warm. Colorless walls. Easy-clean floors and countertops. No sharp edges to be found anywhere. Lots of sanitizer. Pens chained to desks. And the smell. Stale and rubbery like vulcanized piss. Worst of all were the dead-eyed patients, sewing imaginary holes and lifting imaginary packages, staring out windows at imaginary worlds, having imaginary conversations. Mostly with themselves, occasionally at each other.

“Mr. Arens?”

“What?” he said, startled.

His jittery rudeness was matched only by the nurse’s indifference.

“Dr. Frey can see you now.”

He followed the nurse down the hall and into the chief of psychiatry’s office.

He passed by door after door, each with a small observation window of thick glass reinforced with chicken wire positioned at about eye level. Glancing through each as he walked, all the everyday yet seldom-seen horrors of mental illness were on full display, none of it unsurprising. Men and women in restraints, agitated and struggling to get free, others sedated, unconscious, finding freedom or peace in only their dreams. One thing he had not expected to see was a child. A young boy, his head bowed, hands folded across his waist, sitting completely still as if he were praying.

Jesse stopped.

The boy lifted his head and stared directly at Jesse. Their eyes met. The boy shook his head slightly from side to side and returned to his prayer.

“Let’s not keep Dr. Frey waiting,” the nurse called back to him.

Jesse resumed his trek toward Frey’s office, which was now in view. His last few steps took him past several white-walled examination and treatment rooms and finally near a door next to Frey’s office that was different from the rest. It was heavier, thicker, made of metal, not wood. The room was dark except for a single amber light that hung from the ceiling. Beneath it sat a man, big, beefy, and bald. He looked vaguely familiar but shadows fell so deeply into his scarred and pock-marked face that it took Jesse a moment to recognize him.

“Sicarius,” he whispered almost reverently.

There he was. The star of many a boyhood nightmare.
As close to a real live boogeyman as Brooklyn ever had. Proof positive, Jesse remembered his parents saying, that monsters really did exist. An infamous serial child-killer who terrorized the borough for months nearly a decade earlier and beat the death penalty rap with a successful insanity defense. Jesse was both appalled and intrigued by his presence.

“Mr. Arens!” the nurse insisted.

Her “can’t you read the sign” tone of voice was like a zookeeper’s commanding a visitor not to feed the wild animals.

Jesse backed away and finished his walk into Frey’s office, still a bit disoriented by what he’d seen. He fidgeted briefly in his chair, pulling the wet clothes from his skin impatiently when the doctor arrived.

“Mr. Arens, I’m Dr. Frey,” he said, stepping behind his desk and reaching his hand across it to Jesse. “Thank you for coming. I know it couldn’t have been easy to get here.”

Jesse took hold of it only briefly, not wanting to catch any crazy bugs that might be floating around.

“Yeah,” Jesse said. “On the news they were saying even crime has hit record lows, there are so few people on the streets. Looks like they keep you pretty busy around here though.”

“Yes,” the doctor said, dismissing the teen’s insensitivity. “Very busy. Mental illness is a silent epidemic, one that doesn’t discriminate or stop for storms.”

“Not even for kids or killers,” Jesse said, still disturbed by what he’d seen in the hallway.

“You are observant, as a person in your line of work should be,” Frey complimented. “The boy, Jude, is prone to sudden violent outbursts. He comes and goes. We monitor him mostly as an outpatient.”

“He didn’t look violent,” Jesse noted.

“It starts young,” Frey advised. “Children. Teenagers. Always best to nip it in the bud when you can. Looks can be deceiving, as the saying goes.”

“Nothing deceiving about the way Sicarius looks,” Jesse parried.

“Oh, he’s harmless as long as he’s being treated, and he’s quite restricted as you saw,” Frey responded. “I keep him very close by.”

Harmless. That wasn’t the first thought that came to Jesse’s mind, but Frey was the doctor, a very respected one he’d heard, and he should know best. Besides, the Perpetual Help Psych Ward treatment program was not the reason for his visit. “Why am I here, Doctor?”

“As I mentioned, your friend Lucy,” Frey began.

“I hope you didn’t ask me here to tell me she’s a lunatic,” Jesse warned. “First of all, I know that. Second, I’m the only one who can say it.”

“Loyalty is an admirable trait,” Frey said. “I’m sure it’s mutual.”

Jesse was silent.

“As I was saying,” Frey continued. “You say your friend is missing.”

“A bouncer at the nightclub where I last saw her found
her phone in the street. She’s not at home and no one we know has seen her. I’m hoping it’s just the storm, but . . . ”

“But you have a bad feeling,” Frey said, completing his thought. “You have good instincts. No wonder you are so successful.”

Flattery. Something to which Jesse was quite susceptible.

“Yes,” Jesse agreed. “But this isn’t the missing persons bureau, so what has that got to do with you?”

“I think I may know what happened to her.”

The doctor reached calmly behind him for a set of files and set them down. He flipped to a small stack of photos and began to explain. Jesse was listening.

“There was a patient here. A young man named Sebastian. A very sick young man.”

Jesse casually examined the picture. It was of a guy, about his age. He was striking, magnetic, with sharp features, deep-set eyes, and faraway gaze. Jesse was surprised he hadn’t seen him around but from what the doctor said, Sebastian had other priorities. It was a shame, Jesse thought. A guy with his looks and presence could go places with the right people behind him. But even in the photo, it was clear to Jesse that this guy was somewhere else entirely in his mind.