Fires Rising (6 page)

The workers
, Jyro thought.
They
must've
seen the floating chalice. One of them probably grabbed it, just like I did the rosary. Unless of course I imagined everything. No…no…I couldn't have imagined it! It was real—as real as the beads are warm in my hands.

Jyro fixed the boy's solemn gaze.
Something terrible has happened to him.
Again he asked, more sternly now: "Did you see anything unusual in the hole?"

The boy stammered, tongue-tied. He began to fidget uncomfortably, and seemed anxious to leave now. "Unusual?"

Yeah, like a floating chalice filled with fire? Is this why your hands are burned? Because you tried tograb it?

It really shouldn't have been brought up at all—what Jyro had witnessed was a mystical occurrence, one that may have been meant for his eyes only. But he found it odd that a boy off the streets would have remained here at all, carrying on a conversation with a paranoid vagrant and his sleeping allies.
Is he meant to be a part of it all too?,
he wondered, considering for an overwhelming moment the grand nature of the situation.
A floating chalice. A numinous rosary. A whispering shadow. It all must mean something. And now here I am, a part of it all.

And on top of that revelation, he thought:
My god…the boy is here because…because he came for the rosary. His visible fatigue and pain are the battle wounds he's suffered in his plight to find the blessed charm.

As surreptitiously as possible, Jyro shoved the mystical piece into his pocket.

The one with the hole.

It dropped down his leg, past his torn cuff, and onto the floor.

The fear and uncertainty that beset Jyro at this moment stormed at him from multiple directions. He cried out, clawing at the unanticipated singe of pain the rosary left behind on his thigh. He looked down and saw the beads lying on the floor like the shed skin of a snake, free for anyone's taking.

No!

He scrabbled down on his knees and quickly retrieved the charm, kissed it and rubbed it all over his face, whispering tearfully as he relished in its warmth, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry…" An odd feeling of mourning prevailed over him, his heart and blood tingling with waves of despair.
Don't leave me, ever again…

"Are you a religious man?" the boy asked, puffy eyes narrowing.

Jyro nodded emphatically without looking up, inexplicable tears filling his eyes. "I used to be an altar boy, just like you."

A few seconds passed as a deafening silence pervaded the room. The boy cocked his head and replied, "I never said anything about being an altar boy."

Further waves of uncertainty doused Jyro's spiraling mind, his heart beating out a harsh rhythm in his chest. He pulled the rosary away from his face and stared at it with marked curiosity—had it revealed to him that the boy had served as an altar boy here at the Church of St Peter, just as he himself did at Holy Innocents all those years ago? Or did he know this because the boy had said something about performing mass here?

It didn't seem to matter, because somehow, he also knew the boy's name.

"Timothy," he whispered, wholly aware of an undeniable—and inexplicable—connection with the boy.

The boy's mouth fell open, eyes glassy and wide. "How…"

But Jyro ignored him, feeling the need to gaze upon the exposed rosary webbed between his fingers. He marveled at its carved detail…and the secreted power buried deep within its wooden charms and beads.
At the irrefutable message it seemed to convey.

"That rosary," Timothy uttered. "It
is
beautiful…"

Find him…

The boy?

Jyro shot a glance up, shuddering now with immediate concern and dismay. Like an animal eyeing its prey, Timothy's eyes were glued to the rosary. A moment of grave silence passed between them during which the boy may have been tranced, not unlike Jyro had been upon first laying eyes on the beads.

Stirring, the boy shook his head. He closed his eyes for a second, then gazed back at the rosary. "Where did you get it?" he asked calmly, taking a deep breath, licking his wet lips.

"It's mine…" he said, the instinct to protect the rosary burning in his blood. He climbed to his feet and took a step backwards. He jerked his hands to his side, keeping the charm close. "My mother gave it to me, years ago."

Timothy's brow creased, blue eyes slicing right through Jyro's lie. "You stole it, didn't you? It belongs to the church."

Two vagrants emerged from the bedroom, presumably to see what was going on; conversations in the rectory had been kept to a minimum in an effort to keep themselves hidden from the workers, so the sound of the boy's voice was a concern. Jyro had become acquainted with these two during his stay here at St Peter's. The first was a heavy-set man named Rollo that toted a bible around like a child would a teddy bear. He had a high-pitched voice like a woman's and spoke primarily in biblical phrases. His thinner counterpart, Marcus, was a man only recently on the streets after he lost his job and apartment. The dress shirt he wore wasn't even that soiled yet. He chain-smoked and had a deep, raspy voice that corroborated his bad habit. With great interest, both vagrants watched the exchange between Jyro and the boy, but said nothing.

The beads grew very warm in Jyro's hands. He tightened his grip and took another step backwards. He looked back and forth between Timothy, Rollo, and Marcus, feeling strangely threatened by them all. Was it possible that they all wanted the rosary? "No…they're mine. Mine…"

"
Like hell they are!"

The voice had come from behind Rollo and Marcus. The three vagrants and Timothy looked toward the bedroom entrance and saw one-eared Larry, thief of tools, standing in the threshold. His hair was mussed and his eyes were wild. His two teeth jabbed out in a mad grimace.

In a crooked yet hefty stagger, Larry dodged across the hall. He threw his arms out and slammed into Jyro like a linebacker would a quarterback. Their bodies toppled sideways and struck the wall with a ground-shaking crunch. Plaster rained down from the ceiling as an abrupt struggle ensued, both men locking their arms in a slow, pathetic brawl. Jyro locked gazes with Larry and glimpsed a frightening level of brute determination in the vagrant's dirty face: eyes bulging, lips scowling wet and foul. Clearly the madman wanted the rosary, and would kill to get it.

Larry gripped Jyro's arm by the elbow, and with surprising strength, yanked his hand out of his pocket. Jyro roared and thrashed, making every effort to defend his prize, but was unable to loose himself from Larry's determined grip. A sweeping feeling of paranoia came over him, and suddenly there was a conviction in him that every head in the room had turned on him.

Then the rosary grew very hot. A waft of cooking flesh seeped into his nostrils. Screaming in pain, Jyro opened his fist and shook it…but the wooden charm remained clinging to his fingers like a praying mantis clutching a twig.

Larry made a repulsive snarling sound and again lunged for the rosary.

Timothy yelled "Stop!" from his position on the landing, where he remained safely poised to flee the fracas should it get out of hand. The other vagrants had emerged from the bedroom to check out all the excitement and were now lined up in the hall, faces wide-eyed and gaping-jawed. One vagrant, a lanky albino, clutched the threshold and trembled like a frightened puppy.

There was a smash of breaking glass, and in the next moment Jyro could see the shattered end of an amber whiskey bottle in Larry's hand, the neck gripped firmly in his fist. He lashed out with the makeshift weapon at Jyro's face.

Jyro dodged sideways, avoiding Larry's assault. The bottle ripped into the soft plaster wall where Jyro's face had been, giving him enough time to whip his head forward in a desperate, do-or-die move.

His forehead connected full-force with the crazed bum's nose. The collision produced an abrupt, wet cracking sound, followed by a shocking flare of blood that spattered the wall like a water-balloon's aftermath.

Larry staggered back against the opposite wall. His mouth fell open, soaking up the loose runner of blood pouring from his nose. His hands swung blindly through the air, and the bottle dropped from his hand and shattered amid the growing puddle of blood on the floor.

Jyro stood paralyzed as a harsh bolt of pain ripped through his head, echoing the raw burn of the rosary in his hands.

It burns!

Screaming, he broke his paralysis and shook his hand hard. The rosary at last separated from his hand and dropped to the floor. Tiny patches of his skin smoldered on its dark surface like embers.

Dizzy and nauseous, Jyro faltered along the length of the wall toward the bathroom, flexing his hand in agony, in fear. A filmy blur doused his vision, obstructing his view of the rosary, which appeared in his distressed sights to be writhing on the hardwood floor like a worm out of earth. He fell to his knees, leaned forward to grab it…but it was too far away.

He rolled his eyes up and saw Larry, dazed eyes peering from a mask of gore, a running swath of blood coating his mouth and neck like a scarf. He attempted to shout, but only guttural, throaty gurgles emerged, seemingly draining him of his remaining strength as he slipped into unconsciousness and collapsed to the floor.

Shaky and confused, Jyro struggled to stand. He made it to one knee, and almost collapsed down, but was immediately aided by a pair of helping hands. On his feet, he leaned back against the wall, head spinning, listening to his labored breathing and the adrenalized chatter now filling the hallway.

He gazed around. Blurry faces stared at him, so many of them. No one spoke except Rollo, who had his bible open and was reciting a scripture from the book of John.

He twisted his neck to look at the man who helped him to his feet. He was in his thirties, gawky, going bald, wearing glasses with the frames taped at both corners. He stared not at Jyro, but at the floor, eyes dark and wide behind the clouded lenses of his glasses.

"What is it?" Jyro asked him.

The man's eyes stayed pinned to the floor, shifting slowly from right to left. "You…gotta…be…shitting…me,"

Jyro traced his line of sight. In silence, all the others in the hallway did the same: nine homeless men—not including unconscious Larry—and Timothy, who had meandered back into the now settled fray.

At first Jyro had assumed that everyone was looking at the rosary—after all, just moments earlier he thought he'd seen it moving on the floor—but that wasn't the case at all; it'd remained just as he'd left it: bunched up into a small pile, giving off tiny smoke-signals. No…what he saw on the floor, along with everyone else, was something much more unsettling, much more fear-provoking, and it made him realize that indeed, something dark and foul was present here within the tattered walls of the Church of St. Peter.

One-eared Larry's injury had left a pancake-sized puddle of blood on the hardwood floor in the center of the hallway. It was
moving
…rippling along the edges as though a rock had been dropped into its impossible depths. Jyro found himself stiff with fear and uncertainty, unable to dislodge the lump in his throat threatening to suffocate him. His mind's eye flickered back to his dream, how the blood from those innocents of the past had flowed of its own accord across the bottom of the pit into the ditch the men had lowered the crate into.
Just like this blood…

Incredulously, everyone watched as every errant drop of blood in the hallway was drawn back into the puddle—the spots on the wall, the stream on Larry's face, even those absorbed into Jyro's clothes and beard. Every last bead, skittering and hopping like water in a hot frying pan, marching into submission toward the rippling puddle, like bees returning to their hive.

The room plunged into silence as everyone present struggled to make sense of what they were seeing: movement everywhere, all around them, tiny drops and thicker streams of red, crawling snakelike on the floor and walls, leaching out of their clothes and skin. It was a wicked picture, so
unreal
. And yet there they all stood, witnessing a scene that in the past could only have been made believable through the workings of Hollywood computers, or some drug-induced hallucination.

As the reality of the situation struck, the albino vagrant cried out and slipped back into the bedroom, looking not at all well. Everyone else stood and watched as the puddle, widening and now nearly a foot across, started to seep across the floor, moving slowly and in stages like a jellyfish in saltwater, producing a wet
slurping
sound as it went. Errant streaks of blood, like veins of rainwater on the surface of a windshield, wandered across the floor and bled back into it, causing it to grow thicker and larger. In daunting silence, all eyes watched the blood as it seeped its way across the threshold of the bathroom and disappeared into the darkness beyond.

The thin man with the broken glasses held Jyro's arm in a tight, fear-induced grip. Jyro jerked away and eyed him fearfully, as if
he'd
been the cause of the blood moving.

Then he stared around at all the men. They looked terrified, and rightly so, their faces appearing elongated in the semi-darkness. He looked back toward the bathroom, then stepped down the hall and stood before the open door.