The Wrath of Jeremy (25 page)

“What now, what do you want from us?” yelled
Jeremy in anger as he held the cross in the air and jammed it into
the desert floor. “Someone is dying here and you still want us to
find the damn Kerchief,” he shouted in madness, pulling the cross
out off the desert floor and held it in the air again, ready to
give it another toss. Before he could throw it, Jeremy’s eyes
looked at the hole that he created with the cross and noticed water
shooting out from it.

“My God, it’s a miracle,” said Sam with
happiness. She began drinking the water as if it was a water
fountain while Jeremy, Michael and Gabriel just stared at it,
feeling this surreal moment and not believing or understanding its
effects.

Mary turned her tired head and saw Sam
drinking from the hole in the sand, seeing clear water raining from
it, and said with happiness from her tired voice, “My God, the same
thing happened in the Bible!”

Gabriel pulled her head toward the water and
Mary drank from it, and finally Michael and Gabriel did the same.
Yet Jeremy still gaped at the water, grasping bewilderment to its
mixture; a grin came across his face and he looked up at the skies.
Jeremy expected that this was a miracle and finally joined them in
drinking the water from the sandy hole. David, who realized that
Jeremy was right about the mirage, turned back, and drank from the
hole as well, filling all of their bodies up with clear water and
enjoying every minute of it. They drank the water continuously, and
watched it make a miniature lake in the middle of the desert,
splashing each other with it and playing like children of innocence
and virtue. They drank it with contentment, pure happiness that the
Lord, or some Lord, helped them not to see death. They became
rejuvenated, and their eyes cried out tears of joy toward the
heavens, with the sun not being as bright as it was before, for
some reason, as if some being took a bit of the heat away from it
just for them.

Once they finished their play and were
satisfied with the water they drank, their eyes saw the miniature
lake being sucked in the sand, leaving nothing to their sights, as
if the lake never existed at all. “Hey, guys, guess what I found,”
David said, getting up from the ground with them and getting ready
to walk again.

“What, did you find a mirage?” asked Gabriel
in sarcasm.

“No, it’s better than that,” he answered.
David started walking back to where he saw the mirage and they
followed, walking in his footsteps up a sandhill and saw him
pointing his finger outward. “Look, is that what I think it
is?”

They looked out. In the distance, yet in
relatively close proximity, there was a fresh new village in their
sights.

Their eyes paused, glowing with relief at the
village that gave them a breath of hope and faith. “Yes, David,
it’s Israel,” Mary spoke before they started running toward it.
They ran for the village with great speed, and happiness was what
brought their feet up to such a great momentum. Once reaching it,
before they entered it, Mary and Sam grabbed the cross again and
watched it give out three separate lights that gave a purple light
to its glow, a new color that each of them knew was some form of a
warning that they were very close to what they wanted. One shined
to a small building, the other to a little house, and the third one
pointed toward a tavern that was directly in front of them.

“Well, which one should we go to first?”
Michael asked.

Without answering his question, they all
walked toward the house where the second light shined on, with Mary
letting go of the cross and letting Sam hold it, seeing the lights
vanish instantly.

“Listen, you guys, this is ridiculous. We’re
going on a wild-goose chase in the middle of a desert. This isn’t a
game, we could die very easily out here,” Mary brought up with
stress, great stress that was carried on by her nearly dying.

“Well, Mary, right now I’d rather go on the
wild-goose chase in order to find a cure for my sickness and end
this. Jesus told us we would be cured, and I’m not going to believe
that Jesus would lie to us,” said Jeremy.

They then heard laughter and saw that the
giggles were coming from David’s voice. “You really believe that
we’re here because of that?” asked David, laughter in his
words.

“Well, I don’t know what to believe anymore,
David,” Jeremy answered defensively.

After Jeremy’s words, they entered an old
house where they saw an old lady sitting, rocking back and forth in
a rocking chair, with flames from her fireplace giving a red glow
to the darkened room. They didn’t know what to do, being that they
were entering without knocking, each of them stood silent and
watched the old lady rock back and forth, wondering which person
should speak to the old lady first. “I’ve been waiting for you,”
the old woman silently grunted with a smile. Jeremy closed the door
behind them and they all stared at each other in fear. “Please, sit
down, make yourselves at home….”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

L
ooking out of an
airport window, Jeremy’s mother wiped her hundredth tear away from
her eyes, sensing chills running up her spine, holding thoughts
that exhaled through her weeping loudly. “You’re trying to tell us
that our sons are in Amman, Jordan?”

She and her husband waited impatiently in a
petite room of the airport, seeing all the other parents waiting as
well, demanding to know the same answers that she was demanding.
“Yes, Mrs. Daven, your sons somehow managed to trick our airport
staff into believing the plane was set for Amman. You see, the
airplane was set for Europe, not Amman: we don’t know how or why
they tricked them. Believe me, I am just as upset as you are. We
found two of our stewardesses that were on that plane lying dead in
the ocean. If it weren’t for a fishing boat that saw them fall to
their deaths, they would have probably been eaten by sharks. Right
now, all I know is the plane did land safely,” the airport owner
said, when suddenly the door to the room opened. “Oh, here’s the
pilot of the plane. Jack, these are the boys’ parents, please
explain to them what exactly happened!”

“Are our boys okay?” Michael’s mother asked
while she smoked her twelfth cigarette, her hands shaking with
tremendous speed from the nervousness she felt.

“Well, I really can’t tell you that,” Jack
replied. The sounds of screaming came from outside the room,
causing their bodies to lift from their seats and head toward the
doorway. They all ran to the main part of the airport, following
the screams, yearning to know what was causing them. They then saw
people standing and watching through a big window, staring at the
runway. They stopped and watched as the other people, who were
screaming, stood there with amazement in their eyes, watching
through the window.

“What are you all looking at?” demanded
Jeremy’s mother, pushing her way through the crowd to have a look
at where their eyes were pointing. Fighting and yelling, she pushed
her way all the way up to the window and looked through the glass,
perceiving something falling from the sky. As she looked closer
through the window at the darkened runway, she stood in awe and
silence, with her heart pumping faster and her blood flowing
quicker. Horror took over and lay across each of her nerves. Her
eyes widened in terror as she screamed out, “Oh my God!”

Birds, birds and more birds on top of them
fell from the sky, plunging from the darkness as they piled on the
ground. “This is a sign,” a man yelled out. “A sign that the end is
near,” he added, watching more birds falling from the sky like
raindrops.

The parents stood in dread, and Jeremy’s
mother watched in bafflement, not knowing what was happening, yet
saying in a dismayed expression, “Where are you, Jeremy? Where are
you?”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

T
he old woman
handed Jeremy a piece of cloth, resembling a doily, and said,
“Protect this piece of cloth, I’ve been guarding it for a long
time, waiting for the arrival of all of you.” He turned it around
and noticed a tan part of a human face, staring at it hard as the
old woman, wearing old, torn sheets for her clothes, added, “Yes,
Jeremy, that’s his face. The face of Jesus, the one who was born a
man, a great man with an endowment, a gift of healing, who became
the God to all, the King of Man, who was and still is the God to
all.”

“How did you know my name?” he gasped,
suddenly filled with tears of mystery, caused by his eyes capturing
the God as he knew, staring at his God’s face that was robust,
energetic. His eyes couldn’t believe, couldn’t accept it. He
blinked twice and still when they opened, seeing the image before
him that, deep inside of him he knew no one should ever see until
death. Awe burst in his veins, but then a small innocent grin
formed through his bafflement, as if the eyes on the cloth calmed
down his pores and pupils, telling him it was okay to look, it was
okay to see. Jeremy then handed the cloth to Michael, and waited
for the old woman to speak, while Gabriel, Mary and Sam looked over
Michael’s shoulders to have a look at the cloth. Once Jeremy stared
back at the old woman, his grin melted into a straight glare, and
his eyes shot out with suspicion as they caught the glance of the
old woman.

“For many years I’ve been guarding that cloth
for Veronica. Veronica is my great, great, great—well, let’s just
say she’s my great-grandmother. When she wiped Christ’s face, his
image came upon it, that cloth that you hold before you. After they
crucified him, many people wanted a piece of memory of their king’s
presence. Seven days later, as soon as people discovered that my
great-grandmother had his image on her Kerchief, they went to her
house and began grabbing it away from her. They ripped it into
three shreds and pulled two of the shreds away from Veronica. After
they tore it, the Lord rose from the dead and went to Heaven again.
You see, by them tearing his image they released him and forced his
body to rise. Now, you have to bring him back with his father by
sewing up the three pieces to make one great Kerchief, the Kerchief
that has the image of thy Lord,” the old woman explained. Sam
grabbed the Kerchief and looked over it, hearing the old woman add,
“As soon as the pieces are sewn together, the Lord will speak to
all of you and tell you your mission!”

“Who are we?” Jeremy asked, developing tears
that shielded his brown eyes of misery.

“Well, as soon as you find the other two
parts, bring them here and it will tell you. I don’t know where the
other two parts are, but I’m sure God has given you some sort of a
map or guidance tool to follow,” she answered, seeing Jeremy taking
the Shroud from off his neck and placing it on the table.

“Well, so far we’ve retrieved this map, but I
don’t understand Hebrew,” said Jeremy. The old woman saw the
writing on the Shroud and looked at it with amazement as Mary put
the cross on the table.

“No, Jeremy, she means the cross,” Mary
stated.

“You have completed three signs so far. You
have allowed Grewsal to be vanished, you’ve retrieved the Shroud,
and now you have touched the first part of the Kerchief,” the old
woman spoke in amazement.

“Signs? How many signs are there?” Gabriel
questioned with force, showing by his tone that he was fed up and
angry at the old woman for being so vague as to what the boys
really were.

“There are eight signs all together. You see,
these are the signs that allow the sinners and the saviors to know
that Judgment Day is imminent, the day when the Lord shall touch
his feet on the earth. After you retrieve the other two parts to
the Kerchief, you will have already completed five signs.” Suddenly
the old woman began coughing, ceasing her words for a bit to catch
her breath.

“What are the other three signs?” Sam
asked.

Before the old woman could answer, Mary
stepped in and threw her tone, saying with a strong attitude,
“Excuse me, I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t believe that the
Lord would waste his time by giving us signs. I mean, he’s God, for
crying out loud: if he wants the end to come, then he’ll do it
without any warning!”

A grin came to the old woman’s wrinkled lips,
stretching her lips so much that they cracked from being chapped,
and bled. Still smiling, the old woman turned to Mary and
explained, “No, young woman, there are eight signs, and I’m afraid
that the Lord cannot end the world whenever he wants, but that part
will be explained to you at a later time. Now, you must hurry, I
don’t have much time left till the Lord does judgment on me.
Retrieve the other two parts, and hurry back to my home!” Jeremy
grabbed the Shroud, but the old woman added: “No, leave the Shroud
here, and leave the first part of the Kerchief, I will protect them
for you!”

Jeremy then let go of the Shroud and Sam
handed the torn part of the Kerchief to the old woman. Sam grabbed
the cross and ran out of the house with the rest of them, heading
across the street to the small building that the second light from
the cross shined to. Before they entered it, Jeremy looked back at
the old woman’s house across the street. As his eyes glided toward
it, he perceived the ground all around him was covered with dead
birds of all kinds. His eyes paved the ground all around, and saw
nothing but birds and feathers, lying still, filled with death that
gave out a strong stench that made the rest look and see what
smelled so ghastly. Their eyes caught the same thing as Jeremy’s,
but they all ignored it, and turned around to face the door. Jeremy
ignored it as well, and ran into the house first. They all entered
it, slowly, and Mary and Sam grabbed onto the cross and watched the
light point to the back room of the building. They ran to the back
room and stopped immediately once their eyes caught sight of two
people sleeping on a bed. The girls grabbed onto the cross again
and watched as it shined directly down to the brown carpet of the
floor, causing perplexity to set into their minds again. They were
afraid to wake the two people sleeping in the bed, and were anxious
as well that their confusion as to the direction of the light
wouldn’t lessen in time before the two people awoke.