The Wrath of Jeremy (11 page)

Frank dragged David’s body back into the room
they were in and placed him in the chair again, watching David’s
face while he noticed a mark that was on his chest. Since his shirt
was pulled down a little bit from Frank dragging him, the mark
revealed itself even more. He reached down to David’s chest and
pulled his shirt down even more to reveal the mark more clearly.
That’s when he saw a symbol that resembled a wing. It was an
angel’s wing. At first he thought it was a tattoo, but then he
realized that it had ridges at every end of it. They were types of
ridges that only a scar from being burned could give. He looked
down at the floor and saw his cross that he remembered levitated in
air, yet he thought that was a dream. He picked up the cross,
rubbed it in his hairy old hands, and gazed back at David’s face,
whispering, “Who are you, anyway?”

CHAPTER SEVEN

H
eartbeats raced in
a mysterious, inexplicable dance, pumping quickly, equaling one
rhythm that dilated each pulse to a higher beat. Jeremy, Michael
and Gabriel sat together, apprehensive and perplexed, not speaking
to one another, only hearing the faint whisper of a cool breeze
rushing in through an open but barred window that cooled down the
tight, humid office of misunderstood faiths. They didn’t stare at
each other, but the tightness and discomfort worsened when Doctor
Mary Callahan sat in the center of the office with the three boys
surrounding her, being seated quietly, hearing her say in happy
note, “Everyone, I would like you to welcome Jeremy to Grewsal.”
The circle was still, quiet, like a myth’s secret, not wanting to
reveal itself to the old or young, craving to not have any spoken
words that would open up a new version of its story. Yet Gabriel
smiled at Jeremy, as if he had a secret craving to be told, a
beacon waiting to be seen, while Mary kept up her positive energy
and spirit, smiling to them all in an attempt to reach their trust
through benevolence and through her beautiful aura.

Mary showed her benevolence to all of her
patients, even the ones she detested. Ever since she graduated
medical school at the age of twenty-two, she developed a strong
bond toward the sick, treating them as if they were unicorns with a
broken heart, trying to mend them so their beauty could be seen by
all, forever, everlastingly. The ones she disliked she still
treated the same. To her, a broken heart was the same in all,
whether it’s evil or not. Now that she’s twenty-six, she treats all
of her patients like they’re her own children, stepping up from her
unicorn allegory to actual human beings. It was a small step to
some, but a large one for Mary, indeed.

Mary noticed the smile from Gabriel, but
didn’t see one on Michael’s pained face, so she went on with her
speech, continuing with, “Also, I would like to welcome you,
Gabriel. Grewsal is a very good institution that will help you all
deal with your problem…. Now, you all know why you’re here, but I
want to hear from you guys. Let’s start with Michael. Michael, why
are you here?”

Michael gazed upon a wall that was directly
behind Mary, staring at it, knowing that a cross, which was hanging
on the wall, was something that his interrupted eyes should
observe. With Michael still perceiving the cross in a strong look,
he demanded in strictness, “Before I tell you, I want you to remove
that thing, that cross!”

Mary turned around and saw the cross hanging.
“Why do you want me to remove it?”

“Because, I just do,” he replied in crazy
laughter.

Mary got up and took the cross from the wall.
Walking back to her seat while holding the cross, she looked it
over. She held it up to Michael, questioning his fear with, “Why
are you afraid of this? It’s not going to hurt you….”

Michael slapped the cross from out of her
hand and it fell to the ground. Jeremy and Gabriel were in a
frightened trance, and watched the cross hit the floor face-up.
Michael shot up from his seat and ran to her office door, screaming
out a low moaning noise, desperately trying to open it; it was
locked from the inside, as well as the outside. Mary got up from
her seat and tried calming Michael down by hugging him, but he
pushed her away, yelling, “Don’t you ever do that to me again. You
don’t realize how much grief and pain that cross caused me….” He
pounded on the door in a desperate attempt to escape. “It’s evil!”
yelled Michael.

The pressure was thickening in the room.
Screams and anger could be felt by Jeremy, perceiving Michael
shouting at Mary, with the single cross still lying on the neatly
buffed wooden floor. The screaming stopped when Jeremy got up from
his seat, and said, “I don’t think it is!”

Michael, Gabriel and Mary turned to face him,
hearing his words reverberating through all their minds; they were
words of truth. His words, their deep overtone, meant that he knew
the reason why they’re seeing statues move about, and why they’re
in Grewsal; all this came from one sentence. No noise existed in
the room, except the memory of Jeremy’s sentence that pounded in
Gabriel and Michael’s minds like a rusted nail being driven into an
oak tree by a jackhammer. To Mary, it was her curiosity that
allowed her to stare at Jeremy after he spoke his words. She craved
to know what he meant by that sentence, while Gabriel and Michael
knew what he meant, and yearned for him to say it—a cure. At least
that’s what they thought.

“What are you talking about?” asked
Michael.

“The cross, you said it’s evil, and I’m
saying it’s not,” replied Jeremy, while Mary and Michael slowly sat
down in their seats again, listening closely to what seemed to be a
theory of Jeremy’s. They all listened in an interested fashion,
while Jeremy began to explain something he didn’t ever think would
come out of his mouth.

“We’re all here for the same reason, a reason
that all of us feel is kind of crazy.” After Jeremy ended his words
to take in the next breath of air, a buzzer shot down the silence
and went off in the room.

“Hold on, Jeremy, I’ll be right back,” Mary
said. She got up from her chair and walked over to the door,
waiting till one of the guards unlocked the outside of it while she
unlocked the inside. She finally exited the room, not knowing that
Jeremy proceeded to explain his theory.

“When I first saw the statues moving, I was
afraid because I thought I was crazy. But now I see that you and,
and—?” Jeremy mumbled, pointing toward Gabriel.

“Gabriel,” Gabriel smiled out.

“Thank you. But now I realize that you and
Gabriel see the same things, too. Personally, I feel a lot better
knowing I’m not alone with this so-called ‘sickness’!”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,
man: we are crazy, you’re just in denial,” shrugged Michael in a
defensive manner, seeing Gabriel picking up the cross from the
floor from his peripheral sight. “Idiot, don’t touch that!” he
yelled out, hitting his brother Gabriel’s hand and causing the
cross to fall to the ground a second time.

Gabriel stared at the cross while it lay on
the floor and then looked up at Jeremy and Michael. Silence took
over the room again, and Gabriel stared at both of them, hesitant
to say something he wanted to say ever since he had Michael and
Jeremy in the same room as him. So he crossed his fingers and
asked, “Guys—I was wondering—did the cross ever speak to you
before?”

Jeremy picked up the cross and asked,
“Why?”

Michael got up from his seat quickly, seeing
Jeremy holding the cross in his hand, and shouted, “Drop that,”
scaring Jeremy and hitting his hand, causing the cross to fall a
third time.

Jeremy looked at his hand, the one that
Michael had hit, which triggered his rage. He went over to Michael
and punched him in the chest with his fist to quell the fury that
filled quickly inside of him. Jeremy then screamed, “Don’t you ever
touch me again!”

“Guys!” Gabriel yelled out, seeing his
brother punching Jeremy in the face. The fight began, tumbling and
throwing each other around the room, destroying everything in
sight. They hit Mary’s desk and tumbled over it, breaking the
barred-up, half-opened window and shattering it to pieces. Gabriel
didn’t know what to do, or where this anger came from. Gabriel
dodged them over and over again, as they both wrestled and rolled
around the room, with Gabriel only seeing fists flying and hearing
curse words of evil. Gabriel scanned the room and saw the cross on
the ground. He picked it up and screamed, “Stop it—stop fighting
right now!”

Without any hesitation, Jeremy and Michael
stopped as soon as Gabriel’s scream ended, watching Gabriel as he
walked over to his seat again and sat down in it. The sun that was
shining through the now-broken window landed on Gabriel’s image; it
was like a spotlight, a beacon that came from the heavens. Gabriel
stared at the cross and then at them, saying in a mild voice, “This
cross spoke to me before. It was Jesus who spoke to me.” Jeremy and
Michael sat back in their seats again and listened to Gabriel as he
admitted his experience to them for the first time. “He said that
I’m the East, whatever that means. He said for me to guide his army
to the east!”

“What are you talking about, bro? Who said
that?” Michael asked while Gabriel peeked at the cross again.

Gabriel paused for a second, relaying his
thoughts of confusion, trying to place the puzzle pieces together.
He then replied, “Jesus told me…he said to find his Shroud, some
map is on the Shroud. He also said something about the Kerchief of
Veronica, and that some other map is on that, too!”

Michael grinned at Gabriel, laughing at his
supposed ignorance, giggling out, “Gabriel, I hate to ruin your
moment, but the Shroud was already found by someone.”

“What’s the Shroud?” asked Jeremy. Michael
looked at him in shock. The room became dead silent again; it
became filled with the sound of their heartbeats, their heartbeats
that pumped faster every second that went by.

Michael laughed out loud. “Dude, you don’t
know what the Shroud is?”

“No, I don’t know what it is. What’s the
Shroud?”

Suddenly the door to the office flew open,
with all of them being startled by the words, “You mean the Shroud
of Turin?” It was Mary, walking into the room. She sat down in her
chair again and smiled, looking at her messy room. “Well, I’m glad
to see that you’re getting to know each other. Your question was:
‘what’s the Shroud?’, right?”

“Yeah, what is it?”

“Well, it’s a piece of linen that was used as
the burial garment for Jesus. Right now it’s on display in the
royal chapel of the Cathedral of San Giovanni Battista in Turin,
Italy. I know a lot about the history of the Shroud, it says that
it measures fourteen feet by three inches long, and is three feet
by seven inches wide. The Shroud that’s in Turin actually shows two
faint images of the front and back of a crucified man, it even has
the same markings as Jesus at the time of his death,” Mary
explained as Michael began laughing.

“Thank you, Mary, for that brief introduction
to religious history,” said Michael with sarcasm. Jeremy and
Gabriel started to move their seats closer to her; their curiosity
caused them to listen even more to Mary’s words.

“Why, you’re welcome, Michael, now are there
any more questions you wanted to ask?”

Michael began tapping his foot on the
hardwood floor; he wanted to annoy them.

They all knew that Michael’s tapping was
because he yearned to annoy them all, but they all ignored his
passive aggressiveness, and Jeremy questioned to Mary, “Actually I
have one more question. What’s the Kerchief of Veronica?”

Mary looked away from Jeremy, letting her
eyes wander throughout the room. She wanted to find a special way
to tell him, as well as the rest. Because it was such a special
answer, Mary lined up the words in her mind, and then looked back
at him, answering, “Jeremy, before Jesus was crucified under
Pontius Pilate, he had to carry his own cross to the place where he
was going to see his last glimpse of life. As he carried it, a
woman by the name of Veronica ran up to him and wiped the bloody
sweat from his brow. They say that his image was imprinted on the
cloth. But Saint Veronica is just a legend, no one knows if that
incident really occurred.”

The cross in Gabriel’s hand started to glow,
but no one noticed it, not even Gabriel. “But if it’s not a legend
that means that the Kerchief is still out there, and it has the
real Jesus portrait on it. Am I right?” asked Jeremy, noticing that
Michael stopped pounding his foot on the ground. Michael was also
listening to Mary’s reply.

“Yes, that means it does have his image. Why
do you want to know so much about this?”

Suddenly, after noticing some shakiness in
Mary’s answer, Gabriel looked down at the cross he was holding and
noticed a small beacon was beginning to illuminate from its wooden
body. Before he could even say anything to the others, Jeremy spoke
out, “I don’t know, call me curious George, I guess. But anyway, so
far we know where the Shroud is.”

“No, Jeremy, that Shroud in Turin is a fake.
Didn’t you know that, Mary?” asked Michael in a snotty manner, not
noticing that Gabriel kept on staring at the glowing cross, while
everyone else stared at each other. It was the glowing object that
put him in a state of shock, shock that caused his voice to be
hidden, watching the illumination growing brighter. “They ran tests
on the cloth or Shroud, I think it was in 1988, and found out that
it had to have been made between 1260 and 1390 AD, I think. So that
means that Jesus couldn’t have possibly worn it!”

The conversation was becoming even more
endowed with interesting knowledge of a stimulating nature that
allowed the ignorant to become not so ignorant. Yet, Michael’s
input was broken by the sound of knocking coming from the door.
Mary got up from her chair and walked toward the door.