The Wrath of Jeremy (14 page)

As Michael waited, the questions slowly
seeped out of his mind, and he focused his eyes on his bed, knowing
the cross was under his mattress. Yet, something inside of him made
his mind fear it. “Why am I afraid of a measly cross?” he asked out
loud, slowly approaching the bed to face his fears. He kneeled down
on the floor and reached under his mattress, saying, “This is
stupid, I don’t know why I’m doing this, it’s a cross, for crying
out loud, it’s not a compass. Why do we need a cross anyway, why
can’t he talk to us without it?” He then proceeded to search for
the cross, sliding his hand from left to right over the cold, rough
material, his hand like a piece of meat between two large slices of
bread, as he attempted to find the cross in blind luck. Michael
moved his right hand throughout the mattress, and finally touched
the tip of the cross. Silence took over the room while he slowly
pulled it out. Then he stopped. A loud bang came from behind him;
he turned around to see what it was. As he turned, he pricked his
middle finger on the sharp tip of the cross, stinging at his flesh.
He looked up at his vent while sucking the blood from his finger to
stop the pain from worsening. He saw Jeremy climbing through it,
empathizing that Jeremy kicked in the vent door to open it up
quickly. Jeremy jumped to the ground.

Michael yelled, “Look what you made me do!”
He showed Jeremy his pricked finger, with Gabriel climbing through
the vent in the process. Jeremy started laughing at Michael’s
little complaint, finding it humorous. Jeremy walked over to the
cross, seeing it lying on the ground, and picked it up in a speedy
fashion. He noticed Michael left a bloodstain that was on the tip
of the cross; the bloodstain was on Jesus’s feet. It was as if it
was engraved in the iron of the statue.

Jeremy laughed out, “Well, don’t worry, it
won’t get infected.” As Jeremy laughed, Gabriel grabbed the cross
away from him, reaching for it through the dimly lit, cold room; he
pricked his finger as well, on the right side of it, causing a
bloodstain to appear on Jesus’s right hand. He dropped the cross
and began sucking his middle finger, with Jeremy laughing
again.

“Boy, you two are sissies,” said Jeremy. He
picked up the cross and laid it gently on the bed, trying to avoid
the sharp tip that seemed inevitable to give a cut to anyone who
touched it. With Gabriel and Michael still sucking on their fingers
filled with pain, Jeremy looked at the cross, and tried to wipe
away the blood from it, with some of it coming off slowly. But
then, before Jeremy could even blink an eye, he noticed through the
cold room that the bloodstains on it began to glow a green, faded
light. He turned to show the others what was occurring, but the
glowing stopped, and once it vanished, the bloodstains became a
part of the miniature statue’s body. Jeremy tried scratching the
bloodstains away from the cross, but they wouldn’t fade, they were
engraved in the metal. “It happened again. I guess the sickness
caused me to see the cross glowing. Shoot. Well, anyway, what’s
next?” Being so accustomed to seeing things out of the ordinary,
Jeremy wasn’t so shocked when he saw the cross glowing, blaming it
on his sickness so he didn’t have to face the reality of it being
real, which deep down inside he knew it was.

After Jeremy asked the question, he stopped
his words and gapped at the cross, speculating if the light that
appeared through the red thick blood was really there, trying to
face reality instead of blowing it off. Contemplating whether it
was real or if it was his sickness that illuminated it, Jeremy was
knocked out of his thoughts by Michael replying, “I don’t
know.”

Jeremy kept his eyes on the cross, saying,
“Well, this was your idea to come in here. So, what do you want to
do now?”

“I guess we ask him for guidance or
something,” Michael answered, slowly walking over to the cross. He
hesitated from speaking out loud to it; he felt that it was
neurotic and insane to be talking to something that was made in a
factory.

Yet, he did it anyway, pushing his words out
of his mouth, saying in the thick cold of the room, “Well,
um—Jesus, are you there?” They waited for a reply from their Lord,
but there was no answer. So, he asked again, in a tone that was
below a shout, “I said, Jesus, are you there?”

They waited for ten minutes, but still there
was no reply. Seeing the second hand on the clock moving slowly to
the next second, draining their hope for a miracle into
hopelessness that they’re in fact sane, all of them covered
themselves, with Michael and Gabriel sharing one, and the other
going to Jeremy. Standing up, and staring at the cross on the bed,
Michael turned to face Jeremy and Gabriel as Jeremy spoke. “Well,
we just have to keep on asking until we get an answer!”

Michael was angry and frustrated. He sat down
on the bed and said, “This is so stupid, no wonder we’re admitted
in Grewsal—we are crazy!”

“Listen to me, we’re not crazy, we all heard
him, we all heard him say to leave in one month,” stated
Jeremy.

The contemplating began as the hope of
escaping vanished. Michael became stressed out, explaining to them,
“It could have just been our imagination, Jeremy. Besides, even if
he did really speak to us, why should we risk being caught by the
guards tomorrow by us attempting to escape? Maybe, just maybe, we
truly are sick in the head. I mean, why is it that we only see
stuff like statues moving or crosses talking when we don’t want
them to, yet when we want them to, nothing happens? Maybe when that
thing, or Jesus in our imaginations, said that we should leave
tomorrow, what it really was, was the sickness. You know?” Michael
asked in a stressed-out manner, looking up at his clock again.
“Actually, it’s already tomorrow,” he added, as Gabriel walked in
front of Jeremy and stared Michael sternly in the eyes.

“Because, he said we would be cured,” Gabriel
affirmed with importance. “I don’t want to live with seeing statues
moving for the rest of my life. If this is all an illusion, and if
we are really crazy, then I’m still going to go to Jerusalem. I
mean, don’t you see that this is some kind of a miracle? I don’t
know why or for what reason Jesus told us to go to Jerusalem, I
don’t even know if that was Jesus or not. I mean, he said if we
retrieve his Shroud and the Kerchief of Veronica, then we would be
cured. I want my normal life back again, and I’ll even travel some
great distance to get it again!”

Michael slowly looked up at Gabriel, while
Jeremy looked away from the two brothers and realized that Gabriel
was right—he had a point, a point that was so clear, but yet so out
there. He looked back at them, still pondering in his mind that the
truth might be really something other than a sickness. Finally, he
said, “I agree with Gabriel, I want to have a normal life again,
too. I’m sick of being sick. You two guys are the only people who
know what I’m feeling. I’ve totally ruined my relationship with my
father, he thinks I’m a nutcase—and my mother is beginning to feel
the same way. I’ve lost my girlfriend to this, and every friend
imaginable. It’s been almost one month since I’ve been away from
them; it’s been one month that I have been living in Grewsal. For
most kids our age, if they’re going to plan a trip to go away for a
month, it’s usually to go to some summer camp, or even a beach, but
in our cases, it was to come here, to a mental institution. My
parents haven’t even called me once since I’ve been here!”

Voices, silent ones that came from each of
their souls, were beginning to form words, seeing that their bonds
were growing stronger and the understanding of the pain they had to
go through was becoming more apparent, more real. Before, each boy
swept their illness under a rug, of course speaking to a shrink
about them every so often, but never really talking about it. They
talked more, even now, with them all circling around the single
cross that lay on the bed. Their bond was simple, a correlation,
fellowship that was brought on by a single mission that they didn’t
know of yet. Even Michael and Jeremy understood each other more,
and Gabriel was beginning to develop a mind of his own. They had
one thing in common, and that was this so-called “sickness” that
each of them wore, a symbol of pain, scorched into their
bodies.

Sitting on the bed and talking still, Gabriel
turned away from them and slowly went to pick up the cross. As he
did so, he handed it over to Michael again and said, “Go ahead. Try
calling to him again.”

Michael looked up at Jeremy and Gabriel while
grasping onto the brown metal cross, gripping it delicately, trying
to avoid the sharp ends of it, especially the tip. He looked at it
and breathed a quick breath that lasted forever to him. “Jesus, are
you there?”

Michael understood and sensed that Jeremy and
Gabriel were right. He apprehended the realization that he had a
chance to be healed, so, instead of waiting for an answer from the
cross, he asked again, but in a lower, much quicker voice, “Jesus,
are you there?” Nothing happened, so Michael squeezed the cross
tighter in his grip and looked up at his ceiling, feeling that
Heaven is toward the sky, so his eyes should be upward. After two
minutes of waiting, with tears beginning to fill in each of their
eyes, Michael threw the cross all the way on the other side of the
room, and allowed the cantankerous feeling to take over him. “You
see, I told you we were crazy!”

Before Gabriel and Jeremy could calm Michael
down, a bright flash of yellow light shined through the cross, and
they turned around and saw it hit the ground. A voice spoke through
the cross, warning, “Gabriel, Jeremy, leave this room now.” They
looked at each other, confused, then they heard the voice add,
“Leave this instant, or else thou shall be caught!”

The light vanished, with Jeremy’s instincts
forcing him to look up at the vent. His incomprehension and
bewilderment went away as he threw down the cover that protected
him from the coldness of the room and yelled out, “Oh no, shit,
that’s what Jesus, or whoever was talking about!” Jeremy scurried
over to the vent and pulled Michael’s bed over to be underneath it.
He tipped the bed and stood it upward, creating it to be like a
ladder. He climbed up the bed, sticking his feet between the rusted
springs as Gabriel and Michael looked at him in puzzlement.
“Idiots, it meant someone’s coming right now,” shouted Jeremy.

Gabriel ran over to the bed, observing that
Jeremy was battling it, trying to climb up it, while bending the
rusted springs. Some springs cut at Jeremy’s ankles, creating
gashes, yet Jeremy kept on climbing, while Gabriel and Michael
waited for him to reach the vent and climb in it. Panic crammed the
air, and a cold fear took over their instincts as they imagined
someone coming. Jeremy reached the vent and began to climb through
the vent hole, slipping a bit on his own sweat that covered his
nervous hands, making them oily. As he fought to get a good grip on
the vent and pull himself through the hole in the ceiling, Michael
ran up to Gabriel with the cross in his hand and started poking
Gabriel’s stomach with it.

“What are you doing that for?” asked Gabriel,
grabbing the cross away from him.

“Take it with you, just in case they search
my room. If that voice was telling the truth, I’m definitely gonna
get a beating tonight. I know the camera in my room is broken, but
yours isn’t, so they know you escaped, and they know you’re here,
if the guards didn’t drink tonight. I’m so stupid, I should have
thought about that. Maybe they don’t know. Too late, now go,”
Michael explained. Gabriel saw the tears of fear in his eyes. He
knew Michael was telling the truth, and seeing Michael’s fear made
Gabriel even more afraid.

Jeremy reached the vent hole and pulled
himself through finally. He held out his hand and waited for
Gabriel to grab it, noticing that Gabriel hadn’t even started
climbing yet. Gabriel stuck the cross into the side of his white
sweatpants and climbed quickly, grabbing onto Jeremy’s hand as fast
as he could. Jeremy was helping to pull Gabriel’s body up when
suddenly a pounding came at the door, a pounding that shook the
room. Jeremy pulled Gabriel’s body all the way up into the vent,
and Michael threw the vent cover up to him. Jeremy grasped the vent
cover with his right hand and tried desperately to put it in place.
Suddenly more pounding came at the door, as if someone was trying
to break it down. As soon as more pounding started, the cross fell
from Gabriel’s pants and began to tumble down the vent tunnel. It
went past Jeremy’s body and fell to the ground of Michael’s room.
Michael turned around to face the cross and then looked back at the
door. Before Jeremy closed the vent lid completely, Michael ran up
to the cross, grabbed it, and tossed it back up toward Jeremy, with
him catching it before he sealed the vent lid. Michael ripped down
the bed and hauled it over to where it was, laying it down and
trying to fix the mattress and sheets. That’s when the door opened
and in came Victor. Jeremy and Gabriel watched through the thin
lines of the vent lid, and tried to see what was happening. Finally
they found a good view of Victor’s fat face while Jeremy stuck the
cross into his pants, not trusting Gabriel to hold it anymore.

“So, what are doing up so late?” Victor
asked. Michael swallowed his saliva in a loud way.

“Um, um, I was just, um, I was just praying,”
Michael answered with nervousness in his words, perceiving that
Victor was moving toward him. Victor looked suspiciously around the
room and then placed his eyes back on Michael’s face. “Yeah, I was
just praying as all,” Michael said again, this time with a small
grin.

Victor’s eyes scanned the room even more, but
glancing over the vent, not seeing that Jeremy and Gabriel were
pressed against it, listening and watching. “Well, don’t you need a
cross in order to pray?”