The Wrath of Jeremy (23 page)

Still being hungry and thirsty, they just
waited for Jeremy and the girls to return quickly. During their
wait, and while they lounged around on the steps, four men dressed
in army uniforms approached the cathedral, pointing their army
boots at Gabriel, David and Michael, and stopped right in front of
them. The men started yelling in another language to the boys,
startling them and forcing them to open their eyes to the bright
day to see what was wrong.

They were nervous and confused, with Michael
tapping David on the back, while keeping eye contact on the men,
and whispering, “What are they saying, David?”

“They want to know what our names are and if
we are Jewish or not.” Even after David’s words to Michael, the
troops kept on yelling, screaming higher and higher.

Gabriel became overwhelmed, and yelled to
David, “Well, tell them we’re not!”

“It’s not that simple, I don’t know if these
guys are Palestinians or Israeli,” said David when suddenly the
guards hit David on the arm, demanding to get his attention.

“Don’t you know what answer to give them, I
thought you knew everything,” Michael shouted to David’s eyes.

“Um, no, I didn’t say that, all I know is
about the mission. It’s not like I studied the history of this
land!”

The shouting was getting louder, so Gabriel
went between the troops and David, obscuring David’s vision of the
troops, and said, “Okay, David, we can do heads or tails, or we can
be honest with these… guards.”

David took in a quick breath of air, took a
step to the right to see the troops’ eyes again and started to
speak their language to them. The guards looked at each other and
then Michael tapped David on the shoulder.

“Ah, what did you tell them, David?”

“I said that we are not Jewish. But then they
asked if we were Americans, and I said ‘yes’,” David answered. “I
guess that was the right thing to say!” After two minutes of having
the men talk to each other about what do to, they grabbed onto the
boys and took them away, with David shouting, “I guess I should
have said we were Jewish!” Across from the cathedral stood a small
building, which was the jail, and the troops pulled them into the
structure and threw them in a jail cell, consisting of rusted bars
and dirt and sand for the floor.

They threw Michael, Gabriel and David into
separate cells, right next to each other, so they were able to see
and chatter with one another as if they were in the same cell. Each
one sat down on the dirty, urine-soaked floor and was hunched over
in exhaustion and exasperation, speculating how they were going to
get out of this predicament. They watched the guards gaping at
their own eyes, watching to see which boy would talk to the other
first, but they sat in silence, until the guards turned away and
conversed with each other. That’s when Gabriel turned to David,
still looking at the guards to see when they would look at them
again, and whispered, “I thought there was a peace treaty in effect
between the Israelis and the Palestinians, wasn’t there?”

Before David could answer, Michael raised his
voice a bit and spoke in sarcasm: “Well, by the looks of it, I
guess the treaty has been broken!” Suddenly, Michael turned to the
guards to see if they heard him and a rat came up to his legs and
brushed against him, making Michael panic, his eyes filled with
fear, dilating toward the black rodent.

“Why didn’t you touch his arm and make them
believe that we were Jewish, David?” asked Gabriel, perceiving that
Michael had moved quickly to the other side of his cell, leaving
the rat by a puddle of urine that it started to drink.

“I don’t know, I tried but it didn’t work.
Maybe because they don’t believe in the same God as the rest of us
do, or at least as we do. Maybe that’s why my powers didn’t work on
them. That’s the only thing I could think of,” David answered,
noticing the rat, which was in Michael’s cell, walking into his
cell instead. “I don’t think these guys are a part of the police
force. I think they’re terrorists, and being that, maybe because
they’re evil, it didn’t work on them,” he added, looking back to
the guards and noticing one of them looking at him, smiling an evil
grin.

Meanwhile, Jeremy, Sam and Mary walked back
to the front of the cathedral and found that they were missing,
gone from the hot stairs that the sun heated every moment. They
figured that they must have gone in the cathedral without them,
being too impatient to wait until they returned. So they walked up
the stone stairs and entered the cathedral, seeing monumental
masterpieces while they looked at the different statues sparkling
in their beauty, with the light from the sun shimmering on them
through the painted glass windows. “This is Heaven,” said Mary in
awe, walking with Jeremy and Sam on a red carpet toward the altar.
Mary and Sam grabbed onto the cross again, looked and saw that no
one was in the church pews, and saw the crucifix gleaming its light
near the bottom of the table that stood on the altar.

Grins came to their faces, but abruptly their
grins turned to fright as a voice from behind them began shouting,
in another language, “Who are you?” Mary, Sam and Jeremy knew the
man saw the crucifix shining, so they had no time to talk their way
out of it. Instead, they ran toward the altar and the man who
shouted to them ran outside of the cathedral and went across to the
jail, or the terrorist headquarters. The man explained what he saw
to the troops, and while the guards armed themselves and prepared
to follow the man, Mary, Sam and Jeremy were trying to figure out
where the maps were. They got up on the altar as the girls grabbed
onto the cross again. It shined directly to the floor of the altar,
in the midst of Jeremy’s eyes grabbing this perplexed moment and
flushing his browned face with confusion.

“I don’t understand. What are we looking
for?” Sam asked.

“Either the Shroud or the Kerchief, or both
of them together. It must be somewhere under the ground,” replied
Jeremy. He got down on his hands and knees and lifted up the carpet
that was underneath the table, yearning for his eyes to find the
Shroud or Kerchief. He tried pounding the floor that was made out
of marble, speaking, “Grab the cross again!” The girls grabbed it
once more, knowing that they were so close to finding what Luke
told them they needed, when unexpectedly the guards showed up in
the cathedral with the man who snitched on them pointing his finger
toward Jeremy and the girls. The light shined from the cross,
pointing directly to the ground where Jeremy’s hands lay frozen.
Swiftly, the confusion went away in Jeremy’s mind, saying, “The
carpet, it’s the carpet!” He grabbed the carpet, which really was a
white cloth, out from under the table as the guards began running
toward them at great speed. “Run,” yelled Jeremy. He put the cloth
over his shoulders and ran into a room that was directly behind the
altar. The girls closed the door to the room and locked it while
Jeremy looked for an escape route, searching the room and scanning
it with his shaking eyes, panicked and unsure that they were going
to make it out of this alive. A smile then came to his face as his
eyes noticed a stairway that led up toward the roof of the
cathedral.

He pointed toward the stairway and Mary and
Sam followed his eyes and saw his grin of relief. As soon as Mary
saw where his eyes were pointing, she shouted, “Are you shittin’
me? Are you crazy, Jeremy? I’m not going up there.” Gunshots came
from behind the door, running at their ears, while sweat dripped
from their faces and their nerves frantically raced. Mary and Sam
were still confused about all that was happening. Sam thought this
was a dream. Mary thought this was a nightmare. Yet Jeremy knew
this was a mission, an escape from his nightmare that he yearned to
wake up from.

The gunshots heard made up their minds, and
their feet followed Jeremy up the staircase. They came upon three
doorways which prompted Mary to ask, “Alright, which one should we
go in?” Jeremy unfastened the middle door, pulling it open, with
gunshots still being heard, knowing that the troops were trying to
shoot down the downstairs door. Jeremy’s eyes noticed, once he
opened the door fully, that it led to a ledge that was actually
inside the cathedral, surrounding the dome of the holy house. They
climbed onto the ledge and Mary and Sam held hands, locking them
tightly together as their eyes faced upward toward the painted
glass of the dome. Mary touched the glass, while saying, “My God,
we’re trapped, Jeremy. Where does this ledge lead to?”

Jeremy tried to break the glass, pointing his
eyes down and seeing the seats of the cathedral below, and punched
his fist toward the glass, but it wouldn’t break. “Just be quiet,
maybe they won’t know we’re up here,” he whispered. He noticed some
of the troops were sitting down below them in the seats of the
cathedral, forcing him to stop punching the glass. They started to
walk more on the ledge, with the sweat from Mary’s face forming
into great big beads. While they walked, the guards who were
originally chasing them broke open the doorway and ran up the
stairway. The troops came across the three doorways as they decided
to check all of them separately. They first opened one doorway that
led up to the roof of the outside, while Mary, Sam and Jeremy
walked on the ledge that was on the inside of the cathedral, trying
to keep balanced and silent at the same time. That’s when Jeremy’s
eyes became even more fear-filled, finding a statue of an angel in
the way on the ledge, sticking out from the walls, its wings in a
“V” formation.

“Alright, you’re going to have to walk around
this thing,” he whispered. “Just watch the way I do it, and then
you do the same.”

Jeremy grabbed onto the angel’s wings and
tried to sway his body to the other side of it. As he did, the
cloth dropped from his shoulders and fell onto his hanging feet,
dangling there with his hands slipping quickly from the sweat they
withheld. He stayed silent, trying to sway slowly to the other side
and trying to keep the cloth on his dangling feet. His hands
slipped more and more and the guards still sat in the pews below,
talking to one another while Jeremy hung from above. Before
Jeremy’s hands gave out, he swayed his body enough to reach the
other side of the statue, and he fell onto the other ledge,
grabbing the cloth very gently with his eyes looking at the guards
in their seats. He saw they didn’t hear a thing, so Mary then
swayed across the angel using its wings to hold onto. Finally, Sam
saw the angel in the middle of the ledge’s pathway and, it being
her turn to go across, made her sweat fiercely and panic greatly.
While she grabbed onto the angel’s wings, Jeremy noticed a small
door that was about five feet away from them. He walked over to it
and opened it, discovering that it led to the roof. As he opened
it, guards walking around on the roof came to his sight, so he
quickly shut the door, closing his eyes in relief that they didn’t
see him. Jeremy’s eyes faced Sam, and saw her swaying across the
statue, landing on the other ledge with Mary to help her to her
feet.

Mary and Sam then walked toward Jeremy. He
whispered, “Alright, the guards are right behind that door, we have
to figure out how we can get them off the roof.” As Jeremy finished
his sentence, he noticed a rivulet of sweat on Sam’s head flowing
down her face and dripping off. Jeremy observed it and tried
grabbing the drop, but it soared downward, plummeting toward the
pews below and fell upon a guard’s face. Mary, Sam and Jeremy
watched in fright and stillness, seeing the guard look up, pointing
his eyes toward them, while yelling out in his language something
that none of them could understand.

“What’s he saying?” Mary asked in a frantic
tone.

“I don’t know, but it mustn’t be good,”
replied Jeremy. He then opened the small door again and saw the
guards running away. “Good, they’re leaving the roof and coming
after us,” Jeremy said in excitement as the girls looked at him
like he was crazy.

“What do you mean ‘good’? Now they’re gonna
kill us,” Sam mentioned in an angry fashion while Jeremy crawled
through the doorway.

“No, that’s not what I mean. Now we have a
chance to get on this roof without them being here.” Mary and Sam
crawled through the doorway also and Jeremy added, “Come on!”
Jeremy turned around and saw the ledge through the roof door,
seeing the troops running toward the ledge and looking down in
fear. Jeremy knew they didn’t have enough time to just stand around
and think, so they ran deeper onto the roof and stopped at the edge
of it, looking down and seeing the staircase of the cathedral.
Jeremy tried desperately to think of a plan, while they heard the
troops’ voices getting louder, knowing they were becoming closer
than before. Suddenly, without any more time to waste, the cloth
around Jeremy’s neck started to shine and the girls screamed.
Jeremy dropped the cloth in an instant and it shined even more.

“Let it take you to safety,” a voice said
from the cloth.

The light ended, and they stood and looked at
it and each other, wondering what the cloth meant. At that instant,
the guards reached the small doorway to the roof and looked through
it. They saw Jeremy, Sam and Mary standing by the edge of the roof
looking at something. The guards saw each of their sweaty
silhouettes, smelling their fear, understanding that they were
trapped between the edge of the roof, the scorching sun, and
themselves, holding guns toward their nervous backs.

“Shit, what do we do now?” Sam shouted,
tilting her head in confusion at Jeremy, seeing him standing on the
cloth.

“I know this sounds crazy, but get on it,”
Jeremy demanded. Sam and Mary followed his orders and jumped on the
cloth as well, knowing it was crazy, yet grasping there was no time
to judge.