Fires Rising (17 page)

Reaching 3
^rd
Avenue, he saw smoke billowing from a distant downtown building, sirens blaring nearby.

My goodness, he thought, instantly reminded of his vision:
An army of tattered men facing a great evil rising up before a wall of raging fires and blackened smoke…

People shouted in the distance…and now, a number of confused individuals who'd apparently caught news of some murderous anarchy going down in the city, ran aimlessly across the shadowy street.

Soon, Pilazzo assumed, there would be many more people crawling from their beds to take witness of the hellfire budding upon the streets of New York City.

He turned and saw the construction workers making a slow, tentative approach toward him, stalking him like a gang of prowling jackals.

A girl ran by them, her face a sickly pale-white.

They paid her no interest.

They kept their gazes on
him
—the priest whom they inexplicably
feared
.
How can this be?
he wondered. What would happen, he thought for a crazy moment, if he chose to spin around and charge after them? Would they run? Would they cower in defense?

Would they grab him, kill him?

He didn't want to find out. He turned and staggered away from the men, gripping the steel post edging the entrance to the subway for support. Somewhere close by, a woman screamed. Even closer, a dog started barking ferociously.

Unreality washed over Pilazzo. He took a hurried breath. Then, seeing no other option, he stumbled down the steps, deep into the bowels of Manhattan.

I
n the battered rectory of St Peter's Church, the homeless men drew together in a loose circle, all of them frantically searching their thoughts for answers, but unable to come up with any.

Marcus lit another cigarette from his seemingly never-ending pack and blew a cloud of smoke out toward the downed albino. He had dried blood on his lips and cheek, and Jyro wondered who it came from. Seymour had fallen into a pained stupor, and was sitting on the floor with his head drooped down between his raised knees. His hands had turned an angry shade of purple, and rag-sized cuts of skin hung from them like gauzy veils. Rollo wore out a path between the men and the steps, lips uttering some unheard prayer. Weston and Wrath were whispering to one another, each man giving Timothy a guarded look.

The room had grown very cold. A light steam rose up from the blood and vomit beneath the motionless albino. All those present shuddered uncontrollably as they considered their only option.

Wilson was the first to speak. "So what we need to do is get our mitts on this chalice you're talking about."

"And how are we supposed to do that?" Dallas asked, hugging his frail body for warmth. He'd been running his hands through his grizzled hair, setting it into an Einstein perm.

The men discussed what they knew. Both Jyro and Timothy had claimed seeing the chalice floating over a deep hole. From the chalice, Jyro had said, fires rose six feet in the air with a gush of foul-smelling wind that physically knocked him down. Again Timothy described the streams of blood that spewed up out of the hole like shots from a fountain.

Wrath said, "Even without all that, trying to reach a trophy too far out of reach is dangerous."

"We should see if it's still there first," Jyro said. "And then make a decision on what to do."

"And if it isn't there?"

"Then we look elsewhere."

Wilson, eyes glued fearfully to the heap of twisted flesh on the floor that used to be a man, yanked nervously on his dreadlocks. "Man, I sure I hope it ain't."

Jyro peered down the dark hall. He took a deep wheezy breath, remembering how he'd seen the light from the chalice's fires flickering against the hallway wall. Now the hallway lay in darkness, the twin-doorway on the right nearly buried in shadows.

"We need flashlights," Wrath said, moving in alongside Jyro, bald head glistening in the pallid light.

Jyro looked up toward the ceiling. "Larry's stockpile of tools. I'd lifted one from there earlier. Timothy found a penlight there, too. There might be more."

Wrath turned and peered up the winding steps like a child with anxious thoughts of monsters under the bed. "I'll go," he said, falsely eager. "Where are they?"

"There's a sliding closet in the bedroom. They're inside, under a blanket." Jyro looked at the hallway door, thinking for a moment of the all those who'd burned themselves there earlier—Wrath, Weston, and Timothy—and then of their wounds that were nearly healed now.
The rosary. It healed my pains when I possessed it,
he thought, flexing his arms. He looked over at Seymour and thought, just for a moment, that his injured hands were starting to look…
better.

Marcus said, deep voice clogged with phlegm, "Maybe the tools could be used as weapons. Something to protect us." He coughed, then pulled another Winston from the tattered pack in his pocket and lit it with the one he just finished.

Jyro nodded, trying to theorize how a few screwdrivers or awls might prove useful against the inexplicable evil possessing the church. He considered the painful absurdity of the idea…then realized, if anything, that the tools might serve as a means of security to this force of eight desperate men.

Wrath said, "I'll gather what I can."

With silent determination, the big black man climbed the dark staircase, all those downstairs left behind, watching with a mixture of fear and cautiousness. As soon as Wrath disappeared around the turn, Weston ascended a few steps and waited, while Marcus and Wilson gathered at the bottom step, listening.

"Shout out if you see anything," Weston called, and Jyro wondered with skepticism if any of them would dare race up those steps if the biggest and strongest one of their bunch started screaming bloody murder. Certainly not the elderly Dallas, whose pale tattoos looked older than Jyro himself.

The men waited in silence, and in these passing moments Jyro felt an odd disconnection with himself, as though his mind were floating away from his body. He shivered and a despondent voice inside his head screamed,
Help me!
not a second before Wrath shouted, "
Holy Shit!"

Jyro shuddered back into reality. He staggered as Weston leaped down the steps, not in fear of what had Wrath so startled, but to simply get out of the fleeing man's way. Weston lunged past Wilson and Marcus, then spun into a defensive posture and watched along with the others as a grimacing Wrath bounded down the steps like a pissed-off bull.

The big man lurched into the center of the group, screaming, perhaps on the verge of losing all control, then spun around and peered up the steps in fearful silence, bottom lip trembling below a pair of bugging eyes.

"What is it?" Jyro stared at him, wrought with panic and confusion. What could be more frightening than a possessed man crucified on the wall?

Wrath pointed a trembling hand toward the stairs, lips drawn back to reveal huge white teeth, saliva running from them in loose smatters. His barrel-like chest heaved.

From upstairs came a string of plodding footsteps that were soon muffled as they met the runner covering the upper landing. The men waited, watching in rigid silence as they listened to the footsteps slowly descending the steps, one at a time,
thump…thump…thump…

From around the turn, six steps up, they saw.

First the booted feet, doused in blood, leaving wet footprints behind as thick as mud tracks. Another step, legs up to the calves, the saturation of blood as deep upon the trousers as on the boots. Another step, the thighs now in view, the blood there substantial but in streaks, winding up to the tattered shirt. Another step, and as the hands came into view, Jyro realized they were looking at one-eared Larry, thief of tools.

Wilson yelled, "
Oh man, oh my God, oh man…"

Rollo blurted,
"Dear Jesus!"

The world spun and swung around Jyro, and in his wavering sight could see the rosary dangling from Larry's filthy leathery fingers, the carved cross swinging back and forth in his outstretched hand, gripping Jyro almost immediately as it beckoned him once again toward its mystical charm. Jyro squeezed his eyes shut, denying himself of the charm's lure. He clasped his hands together and shook his head vigorously.

When he opened his eyes, he could see the whole horror of the man before him, two steps up and standing there in all his filthy tainted glory, staring at the men through a mask of shit and gore: nose pulverized, lips split, cheeks battered and bloodied, smeared with black waste. And his eyes…still very much alive, aglow with fearlessness, moving wildly back and forth, pinning all the men.

Jyro thought:
There's no way this man could be alive
, and then his conscience added:
or human.

The thing that had become Larry was in an Elephant Man-like stance, one arm to his side, the other extended, twisted fingers clutching the rosary. His arms—mere bones covered in scant flesh—were fixed and motionless. His teeth glistened wetly, dark brown stuff seeping out between their wide gaps.

And the rosary swayed back and forth and back and…

It was a standstill, Larry on the second step, the rest of the men, all eight of them, a dozen feet away, unwilling to make a move.

Except for Timothy.

He took a step forward.

Jyro whispered, "Kid! Get back here now!"

Weston reached out to grab him but the boy took another step forward, out of his reach. Now perhaps three feet away from Larry (whose freakish eyes continued to remain the only part of him moving), the boy reached out with a shaky hand, fixing to grab the rosary.

Larry didn't move. He didn't look at Timothy. He just stood there, arm extended in a gruesome lawn jockey pose, dead skin flaking off in tiny peels, dusting the floor.

The rosary's charm swung slowly, from side to side.

Timothy took another step closer, and Jyro could see that no one, himself included, was willing to move between them. He could sense the tense silence in the room, and it made him nauseous and weak. A battle was about to be waged and his nerves had taken hold of him, denying him the strength to endure the situation.

The boy stepped forward, outstretched hand only eighteen inches from the rosary now, if that. Jyro closed his eyes and winced, fearing the next few moments. As he peered into the swirling blackness of his eyelids, he heard a shuffling, blundering commotion.

He opened his eyes and saw Larry in all his gory glory lunging forward, fist cocked, arm lashing out, targeting Timothy's face.

Jyro could see, in the split-moment before contact, the panic in Timothy's face as the boy's arms went up, too late to block the punch. Larry's fist connected with Timothy's right eye-socket.

The boy made an "
Oomph!"
sound and thumped down on his rear, both hands pressed to his face. Weston and Wrath immediately grabbed him under the arms and dragged him away from Larry.

Larry darted past the men, toward the exit. Jyro (and perhaps a few of the others) thought about charging him. But the beaten vagrant, clearly under a state of unnatural influence—
like the shit-beast
, Jyro thought—was too great a threat worth confronting.
 

Larry grabbed the doorknob with both hands.

A cobalt fire lanced out, the bright flash stemming up Larry's arms like man-made lightning in a fishbowl gadget. Jyro brought his hands up to shield his eyes, expecting the man to go up in flames. But the fire fizzled out, seeming not to affect the mad vagrant, as though his clothes were coated in some kind of fire-retardant material. In daunting silence, Larry fled through the door, leaving it slightly ajar behind him.

A few seconds passed. There was no sound except for the door leading out into the church slamming shut, and Seymour crying from his spot on the floor against the wall. His face was held in his hands, and Jyro could see that they had relinquished their purple hue for a freshly healed pink sheen.

Wilson stepped to the door. He peered through the slight gap. "I can't see anything. It's dark."

"Let…him…go," Jyro said, the room rolling in and out of focus. It was a struggle for him to speak, but still he mustered the strength to add, "The rosary…it will be delivered to its rightful possessor. We…we need to find the chalice."

"How can you be so sure?" Weston looked at Jyro, face pale except for the dark circles that had settled in under his eyes.

"Jyro…" Timothy grimaced, climbing to his feet. "We have to get it from him."

"Listen to the man," Wrath interjected, voice deep and booming. He put a hand on the boy's shoulder, gentle but firm. "Our message has been delivered, our mission laid out before us. Let us gather ourselves, and abide by it as a group. There's strength in numbers."

Jyro nodded vigorously, thankful for the support. The rest of the men followed suit, along with Timothy, whose eye was swelling up and turning an angry purple.

"The chalice…" Timothy uttered painfully, looking as if he were going to puke. "We…" he trailed off, seemingly drained of any strength to continue.