Hallowed

  And then there was Jesse. Languishing in a hospital bed down the hall in the next ward. In a light coma, Frey had told his parents and the newspapers. And as far as Agnes was concerned, the doctor planned to keep it that way, judging from the snide whispers among the nurses about Jesse’s long-term “treatment” plan. Heavy sedation. A sudden turn of her door handle interrupted her internal monologue.

  “You have a visitor,” the floor nurse advised.

  Agnes stared at her blankly.

  “Who?” she whispered suspiciously, looking past the sour-pussed woman for a few of Frey’s minions.

  “Who else? The only person who ever comes to visit you,” the nurse advised snidely. “Your mother.”

  “You mean the only person allowed to visit me,” Agnes challenged.

  “Are you coming or not?”

  Agnes exhaled and stood slowly, her joints aching far too much for a person her age, as she dragged herself toward the doorway, her feet sliding slightly in the hospital-issued slippers she wore. The nurse led her to a familiar spot down the hall with two empty chairs. Both positioned right outside of Dr. Frey’s office. His door was cracked open and she could see him busily juggling phone calls and shuffling files, seemingly unaware of her presence.

  Agnes sat and stared straight down the hallway toward the reception area and watched her mother enter and approach. Appearing bigger and bigger as she got closer and closer. Like a monster from a horror movie. Martha appeared harried to her. Bothered. As usual. There was nothing calming about her gait or her greeting.

  “What on earth was that commotion about?” Martha complained. “They had me waiting in reception forever, like some kind of pharmaceutical salesperson.”

  Martha ducked her head into Frey’s office and smiled. Frey stopped what he was doing, hit the mute button on his phone, and acknowledged her. “Mrs. Fremont.”

  Martha beamed as if she’d just seen a celebrity in her local restaurant.

  Agnes was disgusted at the coziness between the two of them. “Nice to see you too, Mother.”

  Martha fiddled with her purse, straightened her skirt and jacket, and sat down, legs crossed at the ankles.

  “I hope it wasn’t you causing trouble,” Martha chided.

  “It was Cecilia,” Agnes said, knowing full well what to expect in reply.

  “I should have known,” Martha said tersely.

  Agnes found herself looking back through the doctor’s office door nervously like a convict’s lawyer worried about being overheard.

  “You have to get me out of here,” Agnes growled, reaching for her mom and digging her nails into Martha’s wrists.

  “Agnes!” Martha shouted, attracting stares from the floor nurse at the desk down the hall. “This is not like you.”

  “No, Mother. I’m not myself at all. That’s just the point. Not with the shit they’re pumping into me every day.”

  “Agnes,” Martha whispered in the most sympathetic tone she could muster.

  “Something’s gotten hold of you. You can’t see it but you will. With therapy, medication, and Doctor Frey’s help you’ll be as good . . . as new.”

  “Fuck him,” she spat. “He’s the reason why I’m here. And you.”

  “Quiet!” Martha reprimanded. “Don’t you think he can hear you?”

  “Oh, I’m sure he can. Why do you think we meet outside of his office?”

  Martha pulled away from Agnes’s grasp and noted the small scar that remained from her daughter’s suicide attempt.

  “I hope you’re not getting paranoid again,” Martha said, the judgmental tone in her voice not even thinly disguised. “Who knows? Maybe this is you now. Maybe I’ve been blind. All this started with your trip to the ER.”

  Agnes was ready to unleash when the nurse’s voice blared over Frey’s speakerphone and spilled out the office door.

  “Doctor Frey,” the nurse said. “Daniel Less for you. Line 1.”

  Martha was way too impressed for Agnes’s liking. They both heard Frey stand and walk toward the door. He smiled at both of them and closed it.

  “Daniel Less? Friends in such high places,” Martha whispered giddily. “You should be happy, Agnes. I’ve got you with the best there is.”

  “You’re fangirling a psychopath,” Agnes said under her breath.

  “What’s that?” her mother asked, barely listening.

  “I’m getting tired, Mother.” Agnes knew this visit was going nowhere and sought to cut it short.

  “Just as well,” Martha said, fidgeting once again for her phone. “I’m already running behind thanks to that stunt your friend pulled.”

  “Oh, you mean that fighting not to have her brain fried and her body shocked into torturous spasms? Having her soul ripped out? That stunt?”

  “She’s an accused criminal. A murderer. She killed Finn, for God’s sake. No matter what you said he tried to do to you, no one is a judge and jury.”

  Agnes glowered at her, chafing at her hypocrisy. “Except for you, isn’t that true, Mother? And Frey.”

  “Stop resisting, Agnes. You have to let go of these delusions if you’re ever going to be well.”

  “Why can’t you understand that I’m perfectly well,” Agnes shouted in frustration.

  “Mentally ill people never think they’re sick, Agnes.”

  “Is that what Doctor Frey told you?”

  Martha was dismissive of the jibe. “Remember, they didn’t build that ECT room just for Cecilia. If this keeps up you might just find yourself there.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “I just don’t know what I ever did to deserve this. I’m trying to help!”

  “That’s the problem. You don’t know what you ever did. Well, all you have to do is just get me out of here!”

  Agnes turned away from her.

  “I don’t want to fight, Agnes. But I’m not signing any papers until I have my daughter back.”

  Agnes’s frustration had reached the breaking point. “Can you at least do me one small favor before you go?”

  “That depends,” Martha answered in tough-love mode.

  “Walk me to Jesse’s room. They won’t stop me if I’m with you.”

  Martha looked at her intensely, considering her daughter’s request. Agnes saw some sympathy in her mother’s eyes for the first time in a long time.

  “Well, okay, I don’t see what harm it can do.”

  Martha escorted Agnes to the other side of the ward where Jesse was recovering, the floor nurse eyeing them each step of the way. They entered and Agnes left Martha in the doorway as she approached Jesse. Gone was the battery of life-saving machinery she’d seen attached to him following the savage attack. What remained was a single IV stand dangling a bag of saline solution to keep him hydrated and a bag of sedative.

  “Such a tragedy. A young man doomed to life as a vegetable,” Martha said, as she looked on impatiently at the unconscious young man in the bed. “All self-inflicted.”

  Agnes heard her mother’s comments, knowing they were meant for her, but didn’t listen. She stood by his bedside and brought her hand to his forehead, pushed aside his hair and brushed the tips of her fingers along his cheeks. He was thin and pale, but warm. Breathing. His hands were resting clasped on his chest. She grabbed them gently and entangled them with hers. She brought her mouth to his ear as her copper hair fell about him, blanketing both their faces, hiding them. “Wake up, Jesse,” she whispered. “Please wake up.” She began to weep. “We need you now. We need you so badly.”

  Martha was uncomfortable witnessing such a scene, starring her daughter.

  “All right, Agnes. There’s nothing you or anyone can do for him and I’ve really got to go.” Martha coaxed Agnes up to a standing position slowly, and as she did, she saw Jesse’s finger move ever so slightly. Agnes saw it too.

  “Mother?” Agnes said.

  Martha was silent for a moment. “Agnes, don’t do this to yourself,” she said, brushing over what they
both just saw.

  “You saw his finger move,” Agnes said. “I know you did.”

  “That sometimes happens, I guess,” Martha said.

  “You guess?” Agnes asked. “You saw it with your own two eyes.”

  “Reflexes, Agnes,” Martha said. “Why do you always have to go . . . there?”

  “Where?” Agnes asked. “To hope?”

  Martha ignored the slight. “I have to go. I’ll never get out of here. I have to fight through that crowd down there. Ugh, it’s going to set me back even further.”

  “What crowd?”

  “Jesus, I’m surprised you can’t hear them from up here. The same idiots that were hanging around our house. Praying. Carrying signs. Yelling at passersby. Blocking the entrance. I think even Hazel was down there.”

  “Why?”

  “Trying to get you and your partner in crime out of here. Lot of good it will do them. They should throw the bunch of them in jail if you ask me.”

  Agnes smiled a knowing smile as the first ray of hope crossed her face since she’d been admitted.

  “I’m ready to go back to my room.”

  “Okay, sweetheart,” Martha said, leaning in just far enough for an air hug as they parted ways. “Will you be all right?”

  “I’m going to be just fine now, Mother.”

  The Pope prayed, as was his custom, on his knees, elbows positioned on the kneeler armrest, eyes shut tight, one hand gently fingering his brow, the other a rosary. Except today he prayed even more fervently. He prayed for guidance and for strength. He prayed for calm in the face of the visitor he was expecting momentarily.

  Some footsteps and then a quiet voice alerted him. “Holy Father, he is here.”

  The Pope concluded his prayers with a faint “amen” and nodded to the young attendant. He rose to greet, if not welcome, his guest, the weight of his office showing in the weariness of his expression. The former Cardinal DeCarlo, pale and weakend from confinement in his quarters, entered the cavernous room and approached the Pope slowly, trailed by two Swiss Guardsmen. He appeared to the Pope to be extraordinarily frail and spent, as if he was beginning to wither now that his nefarious purpose had been revealed.

  DeCarlo stopped a few feet from the Pope. The two men, once friends and colleagues, eyed each other suspiciously. The Pope waved off the soldiers.

  “Leave us, please.”

  The Swiss Guard departed.

  The intense silence between them was not empty or even awkward, but preparatory. After a while, DeCarlo spoke, a note of defiance and sarcasm in his voice. “I thought when the soldiers came for me, they would be bringing me to one of your newly minted exorcists.”

  “You’re defrocked, confined to your quarters, and without authority any longer. The evil within you cannot spread. I am satisfied.”

  “Yes, Vincenzo. Complete authority is now with you. I should know, pezzonovante. I made sure of it.”

  The Pope bristled at the visitor’s insulting informality. DeCarlo did not address him with either the formal titles or endearing ones to which he had become accustomed, but with his given name, signaling his contempt for the man whose papacy he’d once fought for.

  “Mi ricordo,” the Pope replied in Italian, acknowledging DeCarlo’s efforts on his behalf as a fact well known to them both. “What has turned you against me? Against God?”

  “Against God? That is quite a presumption.”

  “You were my closest advisor, my friend, and you betrayed me. I trusted you.”

  “And I trusted you. And you betrayed me. And your office. And the Church,” DeCarlo railed, his voice echoing off the marble floors up to the vaulted ceiling.

  “You are mad.”

  “I am mad? You elevate trash to the Throne of Heaven and you accuse me of insanity? It is you who eviscerate our traditions, cede the authority conferred upon us by celebrating the unworthy, making sinners of saints, hallowed of the hellbound.”

  “You consorted with our enemies, those who would undermine us,” the Pope chastised. “Who would turn the people against hope, against faith.”

  “I think we’ve done a good enough job of that ourselves, Vincenzo.” The angry and anguished look in the Pope’s eyes confirmed to the Cardinal that he’d hit a sore spot. The wounds to the Vatican from the abuse scandals throughout the world were still very fresh. Wounds this Pope was sworn to heal.

  “Those that do evil are punished and do not tarnish the good that is also done.”

  “But they are not punished,” DeCarlo spat. “Not shamed. Not shunned. They are empowered. Just like your saints.”

  “I do not need to justify myself to you,” the Pope rejoined. “The world is ever changing and so too must traditions. These girls bring a new and powerful message, heard by those who’ve stopped listening to us, whether you choose to accept it or not.”

  The Cardinal raised a finger, wagging it disrespectfully in the pontiff’s face. “What you refuse to accept is that they are not here to help you. They are here to replace you!”

  “If that is His will, so be it.”

  “God works in mysterious ways, is that it, Vincenzo?” DeCarlo queried. “It is precisely because we have forsaken our traditions, lowered our standards, sought to be loved rather than respected, that abusers of all sorts occur.”

  “You mean feared, don’t you? If it was up to you, our respect would be found at the end of a hot poker.”

  “Yes. Right where it has always been.”

  “Thank the Lord it is not up to you any longer,” the Pope retorted. “You are a man of the past, DeCarlo.”

  “Past is prologue, Vincenzo. Now if it’s all the same to you, I’ll return to my room now.”

  “You may have immunity from the law of this world, but you are not immune from Final Judgment.”

  “Nor are you, Holy Father.”

  “The Lord will judge. Not you.”

  DeCarlo’s gaze hardened and his eyes appeared to be nearly set ablaze with anger, burning like the last bits of flame shooting out from a log just before it dies.

  “The doctor did us a favor. He identified these charlatans. These pretenders,” DeCarlo fumed. “I was only doing my job. I should be praised. Sainted!”

  “Doing your job? The excuse of every scoundrel!” the Pope replied with anger of his own. “You misinterpret all we are and stand for. And now a girl is dead.”

  “Not by my hand. By her own,” DeCarlo declared without apology.

  “More excuses,” the Holy Father said.

  “On the positive side,” DeCarlo wheezed snidely, “at least you have a new saint to worship.”

  “Leave me!” the Pope commanded. “I won’t see you again.”

  “As you wish.”

  As DeCarlo turned toward the enormous double doors in the back of the papal quarters, the Pope called back to him.

  “Is there anything else you can tell me about the situation in New York?”

  “No, but I do know this. You should be prepared to make two more saints.”

  13 Jude looked on silently at Cecilia, who was inhaling deeply on the cancer stick dangling loosely from her pale lips. She was dripping with cold sweat and doubt. He sat nearby, his eyes never leaving her. Like a little guardian angel, a piece of Sebastian.

  “People come and go. Some are cigarette breaks,” she said blowing a smoke ring in the air. “Others . . .” She took the tip of her cigarette and poked it through the smoke ring, violently breaking it up. “Others are forest fires.”

  Cecilia didn’t look back at Jude. She knew he understood; more importantly, she knew he was there. Just as she never looked back at the bodyguards who protected her at shows or high-profile events. She didn’t need to. Ever vigilant. Jude, she knew, even with her eyes closed, was there and would always be.

  She had the look of a convict who’d just escaped the hangman’s noose. But like all executioners, she thought, they would try again. All she’d bought for herself was temporary reprieve, not freedom. Freedo
m, the more she pondered it, might actually be death. Would Lucy stand being there for five minutes, she wondered? It was an upsetting thought for Cecilia, but maybe, she thought, Lucy was the lucky one.

  She continued to stare pensively out the large, filthy windows of the penthouse to the world beyond, chain smoking. There wasn’t much else to do in the looney lounge as it was called. Not very politically correct terminology, but it definitely fit. Cecilia, Agnes, and Jude weren’t officially kept segregated from the other patients, but they didn’t need to be. Interaction was pretty unlikely, and pointless in Cecilia’s case, except to exchange small pleasantries or cigarettes. In fact, to her surprise, they weren’t kept apart from one another either.

  She would have thought Frey would worry about them plotting or planning their escape or even just commiserating, but she’d guessed he was much too arrogantly overconfident for that. He’d brought them there. And there they would stay. Warehoused. Sequestered. Away from their apostles. Their lives. In an earthly limbo, which right now felt to her worse than any hell she could imagine. This was Frey’s plan apparently and he’d worked it to perfection.

  Cecilia heard the sound of muffled, paper-covered footsteps falling just behind her. She didn’t look. She knew who it was.

  “Hey,” she said between drags off of her clove cigarette.

  “Hey,” Agnes whispered back, looking nervously over her shoulders.

  “You okay?”

  “Sort of. You?”

  Cecilia reached out her hand, still without turning. Eyes fixed, zoning in on the windowpane and the world outside. Perpetual Help. Agnes grasped it and sat down next to her, tears welling in her eyes. It was the safest she’d felt since she’d been committed.