The Wrath of Jeremy (44 page)

They began running away from it, trying to
push their way through the water again, hearing Michael yell out
over Jastian’s laughter, “Wait a second, me and Gabriel have been
running away from this direction for five days, we have to find
some other direction!”

“What do you mean? What’s today’s date?”
Jeremy asked in puzzlement.

“December twenty-fourth,” Michael
replied.

The serpent shot out from the water again and
grabbed onto Sam’s backpack. She screamed out in terror and the
echo traveled throughout the tunnel. Jeremy grabbed onto her hand
while the serpent tried pulling her away.

“Take off the backpack,” Jeremy yelled,
holding tightly onto her hand. As they fought, Michael twisted away
from them and discovered a ladder that led up to a sewer cap.

“I can’t, Jeremy, the Shroud and Kerchief are
in it,” she cried out as the serpent started ripping her backpack
with its slimy teeth.

“Come on, Jeremy, we can get out this way,”
Michael yelled out. “Just leave her, she was the one who lied,
along with Mary,” he added in a sinister way. Jeremy turned around
and looked at him with perplexity, noticing his revision of
character and alteration of voice, as if someone possessed Michael
to say that.

“I am not leaving her behind, and neither are
you,” Jeremy roared, still pulling at her hand. Gabriel and David
climbed up the ladder, opened the sewer cap, and left them down
there to fend for themselves.

“Come on, man, just leave her be,” Michael
said. He placed his right foot on the ladder and began climbing.
All alone, Jeremy watched Sam’s tears of dread fall from her
fear-packed eyes. He looked at her, like he was looking at a long,
lost love, remembering his early worship for her, afraid for her
life instead of his. He scanned his eyes up toward the hole and saw
Michael, David and Gabriel’s heads looking down through it and then
turned back to Sam. That’s when he pulled her harder.

“I am a sinner, Jeremy, let me go,” Sam cried
out.

Jeremy sensed her hand loosening from his, as
if she was letting go gradually, her pain was too great, wanting to
be taken and destroyed by this serpent. Feeling her hand less and
less, a teardrop plummeted from Jeremy’s left eye, looking at her
with deep admiration, trying to find the right words to say that
were true to his black soul. Jeremy cried, “I am a sinner of all
sinners, and you helped pull me out of the salt. I will not let you
go, I don’t care if we fulfill the wrath or not. I lost you once,
I’ll be damned if I’m gonna lose you again.” Jeremy let go of her
hand, punched the serpent in the teeth and broke the front part of
its jaw, causing it to let go of Sam. The blood fell from his
hands, due to the cuts he made when his fist scraped on the teeth
of the serpent, but the pain was little compared to the agony that
his eyes faced and will still have to face. He grabbed a hold of
Sam and kissed her on the lips, kissing her with love in his
thoughts, veneration that could never be broken. The serpent was
still whining over his teeth, and this gave them enough time to
ascend the ladder. First Sam and then Jeremy, they ran faster and
faster up the ladder, reaching the top and feeling the stairs
starting to melt away, like they were being melted by some sort of
acid. Jeremy pushed Sam out of the hole, and, before the last
stair, which Jeremy stood on, could melt he also jumped up and out
of the sewer. They closed the sewer cap and gasped for air,
thinking it was all over for now. Yet when they turned to the
streets, they discovered millions and millions of people standing
around them, keeping their distance, in silence.

Michael said, “I guess the protestors found
us!”

Jeremy walked up to Michael. He felt the
protestors’ confusion pushing against his morale, and he stopped
and stared at Michael’s eyes. Jeremy then punched Michael in the
face, yelling out, “You once called me a chicken, and look who’s
the chicken now.” He ran up to David and Gabriel while saying,
“Don’t you ever defy me again, don’t you ever turn your heads on me
again when I’m in need of your help!”

“What’s happening?” a man from the crowd
yelled. “Who are you?” The crowds’ voices started to be heard.

Jeremy, with tears of rage, faced the crowd
and waited for their voices to end and silence to take over. Jeremy
announced to the crowd, “The story we told before is the story we
are now. We don’t have much time, people. Please, turn thy heads
away from us and allow us to say the miracle!” Without a thought,
the people miraculously started to turn their backs on them as if
they now understood and believed in their mission, or some higher
being was helping. Tears fell from Jeremy’s eyes, saying to the
darkened skies, “Lord, please allow us to be in the Holy Land now,
where we were when we met Luke. I pray that you send us a miracle
now, a miracle that will allow Michael, Gabriel, David, Sam and me
to go and lay our feet on the Holy Land once again.” Jeremy then
turned to Sam and kissed her on the head gently. “Get ready,”
Jeremy smiled while staring into Sam’s eyes. Light started to
appear all around them, like a circle or cone, nesting their bodies
in its brightness. They slowly began to see water through the
light, realizing it was the Holy Land and the Dead Sea in the
distance. The miracle was happening, yet suddenly, before the
transportation could finish its undertaking, Victor and Curtis
broke through the crowd, reached into the lighted circle, and
grabbed onto Jeremy’s arms.

“You can’t do the miracle now, we are
watching,” Curtis laughed out. Jeremy broke free from their
grasps.

“I’m afraid you’re wrong, the miracle shall
not be seen to the humans of this earth, you are not humans. The
video cameras, or eyes, for which you sent to watch us, were only
anticipated for human viewing, not for angels’ eyes,” Jeremy said.
The light got brighter around them. Rapidly, Victor initiated his
emotion toward Jeremy’s words, yelling as Jeremy noticed the water
getting clearer through the light. Abruptly, the light vanished,
and Michael, David, Sam, Gabriel and Jeremy found themselves by the
Dead Sea once again.

“We made it,” Sam yelled out with delight.
She noticed that Jeremy’s eyes showed shock in their gaze. “What’s
wrong, Jeremy?” she asked, turning around and following Jeremy’s
eyesight to the thing that made his eyes full of shock. “Oh my
God,” she said. In her view, millions, millions and millions of
people stood in the distance, staring at them in silence. “Who are
they?”

“Those are the sinners and non-believers who
came to see this wrath. But, like we explained to them before, if
they don’t believe before they see the magic that the wrath will
bring, their souls will go straight to damnation,” Jeremy
replied.

She watched different races, religions and
cultures standing together in awe. “How many do you think believe
in the wrath that you are going to deliver?” she asked.

“I don’t know, but we will soon find out.”
Jeremy kissed her on the lips and then just stared into her eyes.
“Well, let’s do this now,” Michael said. He looked at his watch. It
read 10:53 p.m. “We don’t have much time, my watch reads the time
of the Holy Land.”

Jeremy grabbed the backpack from Sam’s back,
inhaled intensely, and opened up its flap, knowing that the
contents will be the ending to their adventure, and the
commencement of the end of existence itself. Embracing the pack
firmly, and feeling his legs filled with numbness caused by mental
strain, Jeremy felt his duty, his mission, coming full circle. They
awaited the enchantment that was about to come, their eyes ever
foretelling the enthralling magic that was in store for them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

C
atching their
breaths, each of them rubbed their eyes and swabbed their sweat
away from their faces, trying to calm down their nerves and settle
in on this fresh, serene sight with desert landscape. Silence took
over the panorama, their choking eyes saw that the rain stopped
completely, and the ever-elusive sound of anticipating dread took
over their mentality, starving their prayers and forcing them to
wait for the next struggling chase. It asphyxiated their hope,
washed away their scars of tormenting anguish, and opened up new
wounds, as they knew something atrocious was about to take place.
It was a mood, a new psyche they developed through the torturing
days, or else mystical and melancholy-crammed nights, they were
forced to endure, seeing what human eyes never should glimpse, and
feeling so much torment that each of them was near the rupture of
insanity.

Their voices were muted for a bit, each of
them standing, looking at the distant land, breathing in and out;
they waited for someone to say the first word. Each of them knew
why they were here, or at least a subliminal reasoning that hid
behind their aching souls, thirsting for the truth behind this new,
mountainous road they were forced upon. Their eyes were glossy and
fatigued, and they showed a form of pain behind them, as if
struggle was embedded in each of their colors, etched by their
destiny that was about to end, without them knowing how. All their
glossy eyes could do was stare at the millions of people who came
to the Holy Land in search of forgiveness, feeling each of their
presumptions running high, questioning in their minds whether they
were going to be forgiven, and even quizzing their own judgment of
God. Yet, the people’s stillness and silence were ended by Jeremy’s
proceedings. Jeremy, quickly with his intent, laid the holy Shroud
on the shoreline of the Dead Sea, spreading it out and rubbing it,
making sure there wasn’t a single wrinkle on its cloth.

David then grabbed the Kerchief and laid it
next to the Shroud, staring at the two clothes and reading the
Hebrew words that were written on the Shroud’s dirty body.
“Alright, it reads that you are supposed to stand with your back
facing the South,” David explained, seeing Michael’s confused
face.

“Which way is the South? I can’t tell,”
Michael stated. He bent down and tried to read the directions that
were on the Shroud.

Jeremy also searched the Shroud’s words,
saying, “Well, you see, there are four bloodstains on the piece of
cloth, and this one bloodstain over here shows your name above it.”
Jeremy’s eyes suddenly widened with wonder, his lungs stopped
inhaling air and his heart started to beat more rapidly, noticing
an actual map that was drawn through the Hebrew words. “That’s it,
here is the Dead Sea. Can you see that?” Jeremy asked, pointing
toward the Shroud. They all looked closely, taking a few steps back
from the map, when instantly the words came tighter to form a shape
of the Holy Land perfectly to their eyes. Smiles came to their
faces, figuring out the enigma at the same time. This allowed them
to think and act quickly.

Michael pointed at the map, toward his name,
saying, “Alright, so I guess I stand here. This shows that I stand
right by the shoreline of the Dead Sea!”

The boys read each of the directions on the
map and began to understand its meanings more and more, and then
took a few steps back to see the actual picture of where they were
supposed to stand.

They all stood in their proper spots. Michael
stood with his back facing the South, Gabriel stood with it facing
the East, David to the west, and Jeremy to the north. Sam’s job was
to read the time for them, grabbing Michael’s watch from off his
wrist.

“Alright, guys, it says 11:01 p.m., you’d
better get going,” she ordered. They noticed the wind was picking
up, forcing them all to stare at each other in a fearful way while
hearing Sam say, “This is no time to have second thoughts, just
call out to them and deliver it. Do what you’re supposed to
do!”

The boys all looked at the millions of people
who stood a short distance away from them in silence, hearing their
fears and wants: they felt their whispers of a judgmental nature.
“We shall now begin it,” Jeremy yelled. The people, young and old,
all knelt down quickly to the soiled ground, praying out loud for
forgiveness to their God, with hope in their prayers that this
wrath wasn’t going to happen. “This is your last chance to believe
in us, to believe that we are the delivers of thy Father’s wrath,”
Jeremy yelled out.

The people looked at each other with panic in
their minds, some wanting to believe in them, but couldn’t, and
others believing in them yet also feeling they shouldn’t.

Sam, with blustery winds blowing at her hair
of grandeur, raced up to Jeremy, took him by the face gently, and
embraced her lips to his, kissing his flesh, and hugged him
tightly. “I love you, Jeremy.” Her words were simple, not complex,
and the way she said them showed panic to her tone. Sam realized
that this was going to be the last moment her eyes shined toward
Jeremy’s, so she grabbed the moment, took it over, and made it
theirs. She let go of his lips and gazed at his brown eyes, seeing
a shield of tears forcing themselves to the surface as they faced
her eyes of innocence.

“Promise me, Jeremy, that, whatever happens,
you won’t lose me, ever. Please, whether we’re crazy or not, or
whether this God really does judge us and take away everything we
see around us, promise me we’ll find a way to be together. I love
you, Jeremy, from the first moment I saw you, and I don’t care if
you’re evil or good. But I just want you to know that if this does
happen, and the earth does come to an end, and you go back to where
you, you came from, I want you to know that I love you, and thank
you for, for loving me. Through this short while, Jeremy, I fell in
love with you, so thank you for allowing me to have that
passion.”

She then stopped her words and saw a single
tear fall from his left eye, and she reached out for it and
permitted the teardrop to fall on her fingertip. It rolled down her
finger and into her shaky palm, gazing at them both as they watched
it.