The Blessed (27 page)

“This is a nuthouse, Doctor. Isn’t everyone here very sick?”

“Not like him.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“He has certain ideations,” Frey explained. “I won’t bore you with the clinical details, but he is quite dangerous.”

“To himself or to others?”

“Both.”

“This patient escaped from here the other night. We think he got out through the ER. He is still free.”

“Do you mind, Doctor?”

Jesse reached for his notepad. The one he normally used to chronicle the comings and goings of up-and-coming celebstitutes whose story might travel to the mainstream media and weekly rags. This was different.

“Please,” Frey said approvingly. “It was the same night that your friend came into the ER.”

“Are you saying she was involved in his disappearance somehow? Not likely. First of all, she’s much too selfish to help anybody.”

“No, I’m saying that he might be involved in hers. He didn’t just escape you see. A man is dead.”

Kidnapping. Murder. Insanity. This was front-page stuff, Jesse thought, as he felt the inside of his mouth dry up and his throat begin to close slightly. He was inexperienced in this kind of reporting, in fact, in any real reporting at all, and he was starting to feel he might be in over his head. “And you think he might have Lucy? Why?”

Frey pulled up Jesse’s own site and scrolled down to a BYTE bit from a few nights before. “Do you remember this photo?”

“Of course I remember it. I took it. I was right there when it happened.”

“What do you see?”

“I see two hot chicks rolling around a VIP room.”

“Look closer,” Frey said.

Jesse stared at the image, struggling to find some kind of wardrobe malfunction or up-skirt sneak peek that he’d overlooked when posting.

“I don’t really notice anything else but a bracelet.”

“Yes! That’s right.”

Jesse was a bit confused. Frey was well-dressed but he didn’t seem to be much of a fashion hound, judging from his fairly traditional button-down and khaki outfit. Not the sort of person to pay much mind to a bracelet.

“So? It’s nice,” Jesse said. “I got flooded with e-mails and texts from girls wanting to know where she got it. Even more so than usual.”

“I know where she got it,” the doctor said.

Frey opened the folder on top of his desk and pushed it toward Jesse. It contained three photographs, each of a similar bracelet, with different charms dangling from them. One was identical to the bracelet that Lucy was wearing at the club.

“What is it, some kind of devil sign?” Jesse said, pointing to the charm.

“No, quite the opposite. It is a milagro. The kind of emblem you often find hanging from rosary beads, pinned inside of garments, or affixed to chaplets like these.”

“What’s so special about them?”

“I’m not sure but they were special enough to him that he stole them from the old chapel beneath the Church of the Precious Blood.”

A relic thief. Jesse wasn’t very impressed. The church had been a construction site for a while. Maybe he wanted a souvenir or something to pawn. It sounded more like a prank to Jesse than some mysterious plot.

“I’m not sure where you are going with this. Lucy’s not religious, Doctor. The only appeal of that bracelet to her would be as an accessory. She could have found it on the street for all I know.”

“When he arrived here, we took them from him. Three of them. When he left, they were gone.”

“You think he gave them to Lucy. Intentionally?”

The idea of gifting a stranger with prayer beads was something Jesse had only seen on street corners and music festivals upstate, but then again this guy was crazy.

“Coincidentally, two other girls were admitted to the emergency room on that night. Both are missing.”

Jesse stared at the photo of the chaplet intently.

“Two and three?” he said, solemnly.

“Precisely,” the doctor said. “The second girl was reported missing yesterday by her mother. Agnes Fremont is her name. A suicide attempt. I evaluated her myself.”

“And the third?”

“A musician who plays clubs around Brooklyn and the Bowery . . . Cecilia Trent.”

“Sounds familiar,” Jesse said, searching his mental file until her name clicked. “She’s hot. Critic’s darling. Dresses over-the-top. She’s got a small following I think. Superfan types. I almost wrote something about her once.”

“Her concerts were inexplicably canceled the past few nights. Odd because she’s never missed a show before. No matter what the weather, as I found out. She only lives across the street from the dive where she was supposed to do these shows acoustically. The club stayed open for the locals, blackout and all.”

“Yeah, she’s the kind that would play to an empty room if they’d have her,” Jesse acknowledged. “But then this really is some end-of-the-world shit going on outside. Who could blame her for not showing?”

Jesse was starting to feel uneasy, as if a narrative was being planted in his brain.

Frey pushed the folder with CeCe’s picture in it closer to Jesse.

“Does this look like a girl who is afraid of a little rain?”

Jesse balked at the massive understatement. “A little rain?”

Frey just grinned.

The doctor was persuasive, Jesse had to admit. But then, Frey was the man who got Sicarius off, wasn’t he? Jesse stood abruptly and backed away from the desk, a chill running down his spine.

“Why tell me all this, Doctor? This is really a matter for the police.”

“The police are on it but the storm slowed everything down, including the investigation. All their resources are assigned to emergency services. Until it blows over, and then the cleanup begins.”

“And the death?”

“Has been reported as accidental for the time being and buried in the papers by the storm coverage,” Frey said. “Interested?”

Jesse couldn’t help himself. His ego kicked in.

“Interested.”

“This is a dangerous guy and he needs to be found as quickly as possible. Before he can do any further harm to these girls.”

“Yes.”

“Of course, if you attribute any of this to me, I will deny it, so I’m trusting you to keep this confidential.”

“I’m good at keeping secrets, Doctor.”

“Good. I don’t think you want to get into a credibility contest with me.”

“Threats? So soon?”

“I’m handing you your future, Jesse. This is the sort of story that makes careers.”

“A regular deal with the devil.”

“Not quite,” the doctor said.

“Just one more question, Doctor,” Jesse asked. “You said he was dangerous. Delusional. What exactly do you mean?”

The doctor paused for an uncomfortably long time. Taking a minute to choose his words carefully.

“He believes that he’s on a mission.”

“Mission? Is he some kind of whacked-out vet with PTSD?”

“Preparing the way,” Frey said.

“What way? For who?”

“Who do you think?”

“No. Way,” Jesse stammered, as Frey’s meaning became clearer.

“He believes . . . ”

“Believes what?”

“He believes he is a saint.”

Agnes was draped over Sebastian’s arms, the last to be carried up by him. The staircase was steep and his legs and arms were tired. He placed her down gently on the red velvet steps of the chancel, the same as he already had done for Cecilia and Lucy. She was luminous and looked as if she were sleeping atop a bed of roses. She came to slowly. He was the first thing she saw. She mustered a smile.

The three of them were scattered, strewn about the altar, amid the tornado-tossed debris, like sacrifices, as if they’d just crash-landed on an alien planet. Sebastian attended to them. He had a chalice filled with water. He held each girl’s head up and brought the cup to their lips slowly. He dried their wounds and wiped them clean.

Things were different somehow. It was quiet for one; the
thunder and lightning had subsided. The air was less thick with humidity and mildew. Clearer.

“Where were you?” Agnes moaned groggily. “I thought you were dead.”

“I’ll never leave you again,” he said. “Drink.”

“You okay?” Lucy mouthed to Cecilia through cracked lips.

Cecilia nodded.

She examined her hands.

They were wrapped in linen.

She clenched and unclenched her fingers. They still worked.

They looked and saw Sebastian. A sight for sore eyes. And then noticed Agnes, who was struggling to get to her feet. She tried to get to her knees but collapsed back down to the floor each time she attempted to right herself, like a child first learning to walk. Sebastian held her under her arms and raised her up.

“Thank you,” she whispered weakly to him.

“Thanks? For what?” Lucy interjected. “Why didn’t you help us?”

“What
was
that?” Cecilia asked, still weak from what had just happened. “The underground chapel. The bones. This place is possessed.”

The fog in their minds was lifting, like the storm, and suspicion was returning.

“I couldn’t tell you before,” Sebastian said.

“I think it’s time you told us now,” Lucy answered.

“This church,” he began, “is special.”

“Aren’t they all?” Cecilia said.

“My grandmother told me about it when I was a boy,” Sebastian offered. “Precious Blood is not just intended to be a holy place. It marks a holy spot.”

“Tell that to the developers,” Lucy said.

“Men died here. Sandhogs, digging the subway tunnels nearly a century ago.”

“So it’s haunted,” Lucy shot back.

Sebastian’s expression turned deadly serious, the tale he began to tell as terrifying as any ghost story.

“Not haunted, Lucy,” Sebastian corrected. “Hallowed.

“These were special men. Descendants from a line of caretakers entrusted with the ancient legacy of certain female saints. Girls, about our age, who changed their world by their example and their sacrifice.”

The girls listened intently.

“They dug that chapel with their bare hands. With picks and axes out of rock and sand. An altar and kneelers built from leftover lumber used to keep the tunnel up. Adorned with statues from the old country. It was a place of worship in the truest sense. Built by people with faith, literally from nothing.”

“You could feel something alive, electric down there,” Cecilia said. “I’ve felt it onstage. A power all around you. Even in an empty room.”

“What you felt in the chapel was their presence,” he said. “I’ve felt it too.”

“Ghosts?” Lucy asked.

“Spirits,” Agnes corrected. “Souls.”

“It took them a long time to dig the three men out, but the community and the men’s families kept a vigil. They prayed day and night. First for their rescue and then for the recovery of their bodies. It took weeks.”

“What a horrible way to die,” Agnes sympathized.

“When they finally got to them, they were collapsed over the kneelers in front of the altar they’d hammered together.”

“They were praying?” Lucy said cynically. “Maybe they should have been digging, trying to get out instead.”

“They were,” Sebastian answered. “Trying to get out.”

“But they gave up?” Cecilia asked.

“No, they gave in,” Sebastian said. “People came for years afterward, climbing down into the subway tunnel to see the underground chapel, to remember the men, to pray, hoping for miracles.”

“Sounds dangerous,” Agnes said.

“It was, and after a while, they raised the money to the build this church over it.”

“And those bones?” Cecilia asked.

“I’m not sure I want to know,” Agnes said.

“The bones are their bones. And the bones of those who believed in what they were doing. Holy, some say.”

“A cult?” Cecilia asked.

“Not the way we think of it,” Sebastian explained. “A cult of saints.”

“Couldn’t this just be a story your grandmother told you?” Lucy said nervously. “Like an old wives’ tale.”

“What we felt down there was real,” Agnes interrupted. “You know it.”

Sebastian was suddenly agitated. Frustrated that he might not be getting his point across.

“She was a
benedetta
,” he said defensively, pacing in front of them. “A healer of bodies and souls. A woman of faith. She never lied to me.”

Sebastian’s discomfort brought the conversation to a halt.

“It just seems really strange that they kept it open after such a tragic accident,” Agnes said.

Sebastian looked at her skeptically. “I didn’t say it was an accident.”

“They were killed? Why?” Cecilia asked incredulously.

“To stop them.”

“From?”

“Fulfilling their purpose.”

Between the events in the chapel and Sebastian’s story, it was all too much, especially for Lucy. “What does this have to do with you or us?”

“The saints whose legacies the subway workers were charged with perpetuating were Lucy, Cecilia, and Agnes.”