Fires Rising (5 page)

Jerry had been sixteen when his father died. Three days later, as they walked home from the funeral, his mother was killed by a hit and run driver, her body snatched away from him as he held her hand, the rosary in her clutches torn apart, its beads scattered in the street like seeds.

Soon thereafter, he'd quit school—much to the dismay of his teachers, who were all quite smitten with their attentive honor student—and started attending church every day; it was the only thing that helped erase the haunting image of his mother's body laying bloody and mangled in the street, her eyes fluttering as they took one final glance at him. He'd prayed daily for the strength to carry on unhindered by the perils of mental trauma—a viable consolation for his pain. But with no inheritance to claim—and no living relatives to take care of him—the rent on the 'rathole' came due. Despite his prayers, Jerry Roberts had no money left after feeding his inherited propensity for drink.

With nothing more than the clothes in his closet, Jerry Roberts soon found himself amongst the wanderers in the streets of New York City.

He shook the disparaging memories from his head, squeezed the rosary tightly and prayed for them to lead him
away
from the fourteen years of pain and sickness accrued while living on Manhattan's streets and shelters.

They will protect me, guide me. I have never lost faith in God. My mother introduced Him to me and I have lived with Him in my heart ever since I was an altar boy. Now, he has called upon me to perform a service, just as He did when I was a young boy, after my mother's death. Yes, I can see it now…the beads. I must heed their appeal.
  

He opened his eyes and met the splay of light from the flashlight, the shadow it created upon the soiled wall that of a praying Virgin Mary, her innocence shattered by water stains mimicking a unbound period. He sucked in a long fouled breath and shut his eyes, wishing for the startling image to vanish. Certain fear riddled his trembling body, and he squeezed the rosary more tightly, the warmth emanating from it both certain, and disconcerting.

"
Find him…"

The whisper in the room with him was as real as the beads were warm. His hand went to his mouth and his eyes shot open. Had he just heard a voice surface from the looming shadow on the wall? The hair on his arms stood on end, his gaze fixed upon the wavering silhouette, the stains on the wall darkening the area around its pubis.

"Who?" he managed to utter, eyes still fixed upon the shadow. It appeared for a daunting moment to have moved, the dark outline twisting toward him, eyeing the rosary in his hand.
Wanting
it.

There was a surge of light as the flashlight's beam brightened. It then faded and died with a firecracker pop.

From the darkness that now surrounded him, the icy-cold grasp of a hand seized the back of his neck.

He cried out and swatted himself, writhing and struggling against it not unlike the time he awoke in the subway with a litter of baby rats nesting in his hair. Unable to free himself of the sensation, he leapt forward and banged into the closed door, fumbling blindly at the knob and listening to the whispering voice of the unseen shadow behind him as it filled his harried mind: "
Find him
."

He cried out until the knob turned beneath his slipping grip. He burst free of the bathroom like a tiger from a cage, clutching the rosary against his chest as he shambled down the hall, away from the tainted darkness.

Right into someone he'd never seen before.

T
hree blocks away from the Church of St Peter, Father Anthony Pilazzo entered the V-line subway station at 70
^th
and Lexington, tackling the steps as the heated stench of urine seeped its way into his nose. People of all denominations scurried to and fro, some more quickly than others, most having to sidestep a pair of homeless men seated alongside the turnstiles, tin cans readied in their shaking hands. Somewhere Pilazzo had read that the average Manhattan panhandler netted approximately forty grand a year, which to the New York taxpayer amounted to an annual salary of about fifty-three grand. Considering that the Church of St Peter brought in roughly a hundred thousand a year, panhandling didn't seem like such a bad racket after all. Pilazzo once jokingly told his fellow priests that he might dress them up as hobos and have them cruise the subways in between masses.

He waited on the platform, watching no one in particular but noticing two construction workers engaged in conversation alongside a cement support beam. They wore soiled jeans and tees with leather tool belts draped around their bulging waists.

An attractive young woman, finely dressed in high heels and a navy business suit, paced by them, thus becoming an immediate target to their distasteful comments. She paid their catcalls no attention, stepping farther along the platform with her leather briefcase clutched tightly in her right hand, her blonde hair blowing in the breeze escaping the tunnel. The men expressed amusement with their obnoxious act and shamelessly resumed their discussion.

The train pulled into the station. Pilazzo stepped onto the plastic safety strip at the edge of the platform, a few feet in front of the construction workers...

…and shuddered as he imagined, for the briefest moment, both men leaping forward and pushing him onto the tracks before the oncoming train.

He turned and looked back at the workers. The two men ceased their conversation, twisted their heads and stared at the priest, the drill of their eyes boring imaginary holes into him.

Pilazzo's face tightened as a strange yet understandable uneasiness overcame him. He offered the men a weak grin and turned away. Whereas most folks typically put forward a friendly or respectful demeanor toward him, these two seemed to contemplate him as though he were a curiosity at the zoo.
As if they are scared of me
, Pilazzo thought with concern.

Pilazzo stepped back, off the plastic strip.

He looked at the men again.

The man on the right, thirty-something and in need of a shave three days ago, clutched his stomach with both hands, as though stricken unexpectedly with cramps. His cohort remained motionless with his hands at his sides, eyes still glued to the priest in some troubled, God-fearing manner.

The train's brakes squealed and sent up a windblown scent of burning steel as it came to a grinding halt. In a friendly gesture, Pilazzo nodded toward the two men as the doors rang open then spun a nervous shoulder and entered the subway car, careful not to trip over those riders hurriedly disembarking.

Three plastic orange seats offered him a view of the platform. He sat in one and peered back out through the open doors.

The two workers were still there, seemingly unwilling to board the train they'd apparently been waiting for. The doors rang shut, the train pulled away, and Pilazzo watched with consternation as the two men craned their necks to look at him through the soiled windows.

"Spare some change, Father?"

A ripple of gooseflesh sprinted down Pilazzo's spine. He twisted his head around, shuddering as he locked gazes with a grubby homeless man. Hunched and scowling, the man pushed a grimy calloused hand out that trembled as if enmeshed in a later stage of Parkinson's, and fired a stare into Pilazzo's eyes.

The priest ogled the vagrant's face with repulsion, ancient acne scars and fresher wounds swelling through an untended landscape of wiry facial hair. The vagrant spoke, fouled breath beating back the stench of bacteria thriving on his unwashed body.

"My uncle was a monsignor, Father."

Automatically, Pilazzo nodded, shuddering beneath the pungent shadow of the man. The train shifted and shook as it raced through the tunnel. The homeless man's body wavered forward, but didn't tip; he had the balancing act down to a science.

Grinning in a congenial but dissuasive manner, Pilazzo faced the floor, focusing in on a spot of gum flattened and trampled into a dark gray circle; ignoring those seeking financial support in the subways and streets of New York City was the universal way of letting them know that they should shuffle along.

But the homeless man remained unmoving.

Seconds passed. Again the priest shuddered, his mind now fraught with an unnerving wave of logic:
There is more to this man than a simple request for loose change.

Pilazzo peered back up at the homeless man, and in this instant saw a glow in his previously dead-to-the-world eyes that wasn't there before, once black but now brimming with intellect and an inexplicable bond that for the moment was unbreakable. To Pilazzo, the vagrant exhibited intent on something more emotionally charged than financial gain.

The vagrant reached forward and grasped the priest's shoulder…

…and in this moment of contact Father Anthony Pilazzo saw in his mind blackened skies and an army of tattered men facing a great evil rising up before a wall of raging fires and billowing smoke…

The sound of the train doors ringing shook Pilazzo from his nightmarish reverie. Heart pounding, eyes bulging, he slid out from beneath the grasp of the homeless man and staggered away through the open doors onto the subway platform, uncaring at the moment as to his present location.

He leaned against the arm of a battered bench and turned to look at the homeless man, who was now pleading for the generosity of an indifferent young woman seated with her head faced down.

Slowly, the train began to pull away and the homeless man rolled his eyes and pinned Pilazzo through the cloudy window, not unlike the two construction workers had earlier. The priest's breath escaped him in a single gasp, leaving him confused and afraid as the clear, daunting image of destruction continued to burn in his mind.

A wall of raging fires and rising smoke…

He rubbed his eyes, wishing it all away. Soon, the train disappeared into the tunnel, and the image of the homeless man faded…but in his mind, the nightmare fires remained and continued to burn as he made his way back out onto the streets of Manhattan.

B
efore Jyro stood a pale, dirty-faced boy, whom despite being nearly six feet tall, looked maybe sixteen years of age. He wore jeans and a stained yellow tee-shirt that hung slackly over his thin, trembling frame. His blue eyes, bloodshot and swollen with tears, stared inquisitively at Jyro.

"What are you doing here?" he said, voice weak and hoarse.

Jyro remained silent and self-protective, fingers trembling as he covertly tucked the rosary into his palm. His heart sped at twice its normal beat, the rosary strangely warm against his skin, feeling as though it were a living, breathing creature. He swallowed past a nervous lump in his throat, and in an attempt to distract the boy from the rosary, motioned toward the bedroom, which was still packed with lazing vagrants.

Following the diversion, the boy shoved past Jyro and looked into the bedroom. The expression that appeared on his face was one of immediate shock and disbelief. "How long have you all been here?"

"About two weeks," Jyro responded, both hands now clenched around the rosary to keep it hidden and safe.

It's mine…all mine…

The boy paced tight circle in the hall. Jyro noticed a patch of blisters on his hands, wet and red as if recently burned. "It's only been two months since we last performed mass here," the boy said, "and now just look at the place…"

"The construction crews," Jyro replied, as if to say,
don't worry, we won't be here for long
, then added, "The rec area…did you see it? It's destroyed." His thoughts flickered back to his midnight walk:
Strange that the construction crews aren't tearing the place down as they should be. They've been here for nearly a week. And all they've really done is dig a big hole in the ground.

That's because they were looking for something…

The boy gazed about the hall, clearly distraught. He looked at Jyro and said, "I saw it." Fear and pain seeped into the boy's face, and he gazed down at his burned hands.

"The hole? You saw it?"

The boy nodded. Tears flooded back into his eyes. He shuddered hard and wrapped his arms around his waist. His lips, blue and chapped, quivered as if freezing.

Jyro clutched his fists against his chest, the warmth of the hidden rosary soothing his thumping heart. In this moment of pause he thought of the floating chalice, with its glaring red light and eye-like crux of blackness. He stared at the injured boy and wondered if there was any connection between him and the chalice.

"Did you notice anything
odd
about the hole?"

The boy's eyes darted back and forth between Jyro and the entrance to the bedroom. "I came back here because I'd forgotten to empty my locker. And that was when I saw the hole." He paused, head shaking like a man ill with disease. "It broke my heart to see that—do you know how many games of basketball we played down there? How many times we gathered on the stage singing songs of worship?" He paused as he seemed to gather his thoughts. "I…I don't know how long I was down there, but at some point I got real scared and I ran out of the room and came up here…and…" He trailed off, rubbing his wet eyes, seemingly fatigued from having to relate his story. "I think you need to leave now. All of you. The construction workers are going to come up here next."