She held tightly on to the side of the large arched doorway and braced herself; the brutal wind pushed against her cheeks, turning her face into a virtual skull mask and her arms and legs into reddened ripples of wet, quivering flesh. The decision about whether to stay or go was moot.
“Shut the door!” Lucy shouted. “You’re letting it in.”
The door that had proven so difficult to open when they first arrived was now proving equally challenging to close. Lucy rushed to the entrance and got her back into it as well, the sudden pressure drop of the thickening storm spiking the pain in her head.
Cecilia and Lucy pushed against the gusts, but not before a high-pitched whimper found its way through the ungodly din and reached their ears.
“There’s something out there,” Cecilia said.
It was coming from right near the doorstep, as far as CeCe could tell. A stray cat trying to survive the storm on the steps? she wondered. She braved the impossible wind and poked her head outside and around the door and cried out in shock.
“Son of a bitch!” CeCe yelled.
“What?” Lucy screamed. “What is it?”
Cecilia was dumbfounded.
It was a girl, barefoot, weeping, face buried in her hands, her long auburn hair barely contained inside the lambswool-lined cowl of her poncho. Both were drenched. She was curled up in a ball, shivering from cold and from fear. Crashed and washed-up, like debris from a shipwreck, in the doorway.
Cecilia stepped out and was instantly blown back against the church door. She knelt and reached for the girl, who tightened her pose, making her difficult to move. She was nearly catatonic but still resisting, immovable, as if she were nailed to the spot.
“C’mon,” Cecilia begged. “You will catch your death out here.”
Lucy stood unsteadily in the vestibule, frustrated, watching the one-sided negotiation.
“Hurry up!” she screamed. “If she wants to be stubborn, let her. I’m closing the door.”
Cecilia turned back, looking to Lucy for help, nodding her over.
“Weren’t you just leaving?” Lucy reminded her.
“I can’t do this alone! . . . ” Cecilia yelled, realizing she didn’t have a name to go along with the urgent request.
“Lucy. My name is Lucy.”
“Cecilia,” she replied warily. “Please, Lucy. Help me.”
Lucy reluctantly complied, edging over with her back to the door as the two girls fought the elements and the girl, standing her up, and dragging her into the partially open doorway, where they huddled.
“You’d better be appreciating this,” Lucy raged at the stranger, holding both girls tightly. “This outfit cost more than your house.”
As Cecilia and Lucy tugged at the girl, her sleeves rode up, revealing bandaged wrists and a bracelet. A bracelet almost identical to theirs. The two of them stared at each other in disbelief.
“It’s okay,” Lucy said to the girl, showing her own chaplet.
The sight of it seemed to calm the girl.
“I saw it,” she said quietly, “outside.”
“I know,” Lucy replied.
An unexpected flash of lightning, an earsplitting crack of thunder, a torrential downpour and explosion of darkness suddenly assaulted them.
“Blackout!” Cecilia shouted.
“I can’t see a thing!” Lucy screamed.
The three girls teetered at the edge of the staircase, completely disoriented by the fast-changing conditions, and nearly carried one another over the railing. Cecilia was losing her grip and Lucy her balance. A second before they tumbled, Sebastian reached out for them with both hands, steadying them, and dragged them inside. He looked up at the greenish black sky showing through the rent overhang and kicked the door closed.
Sebastian ran to them and immediately attended to the stranger, walking her gently to the votive stand where the flames of the other two red glass candles were still flickering.
“You’re okay,” he said, taking her hand in his.
He lit the third votive.
“Thank you,” she whispered to him.
“What’s your name?” Cecilia asked.
Sebastian pulled the girl’s cowl back and brushed the long, wet hair from her pale, luminous face. Her skin almost gave the appearance of being lit from within.
“Agnes.”
Lucy helped her take off her shearling poncho and replaced it with her now-dry trench coat. She was raw and battered by the night, wincing at even the most delicate touch.
“Are we going to die?” she asked through tears.
“You are safe here,” he promised her, smiling.
Overcome with relief and regret,
Agnes wept.
“Tell us what’s going on,” Cecilia said as the candles blazed, all three of them and Sebastian, cold and wet, huddled around the votive stand as they might a campfire, listening to the horror outside the church walls. Strangers, but oddly not.
“That’s a big question.” Sebastian studied them silently as the storm raged all around them, taking each of them in, their looks, their style, personalities, their quirks, strengths, and vulnerabilities. Cecilia nervously drumming on her thigh, Lucy obsessively examining each cuticle on her fingers, and Agnes huddled with her knees up, her shiver beginning to subside.
“We have time. Three days, in fact, according to the weather dudes,” Lucy said. “If we don’t kill each other first.”
Agnes and Cecilia looked over at Lucy, signaling that could be a distinct possibility. Without a change of clothes and any real food except for the junk food crap that Sebastian had in his backpack, all bets were off.
“Three days,” Sebastian echoed. “That will be enough time.”
“Enough time for what?” Cecilia prodded.
“For you to understand.”
Cecilia was spooked. “Now I’m not sure I really want to know.”
“I do,” Agnes said quietly.
“I’m really appreciative of the gift, but where did you get these bracelets?” Lucy asked. “I’ve never seen anything like them.”
“They were given to me,” Sebastian said.
Lucy was skeptical that the boy in front of her came from such a moneyed line. He’d have to be from royalty, aristocracy of some kind, to receive such an inheritance. “Passed down to you? These are, like, ancient, museum quality.”
“Why give them away?” CeCe pressed.
“Because they aren’t mine.”
“Okay, they were given to you, but they aren’t yours. I don’t get it. Is this some kind of Robin Hood thing?” Lucy asked.
“That’s all I can tell you right now.”
Sebastian sat back and leaned his head against the wall behind him. Their view of him was still distorted by the light and shadow from the flickering candles and lightning flashes, but they could see he had become suddenly pensive, the expression on his face pained. All of them were curious, but none of them dared pry any further. They were safe. For the moment.
Agnes looked up at the burst of light flashing through the apertures where stained glass was once fitted. The bolts were more frequent and violent now, and the thunder was getting louder. “Did you know that you can tell how close a storm is by counting the amount of time between a lightning flash and thunderclap?”
“I don’t need to count,” Cecilia answered.
“It’s close,” Sebastian said.
“So beautiful,” Agnes said, looking upward. “A living lava lamp.”
“Cosmic. Literally,” Cecilia noted, in appreciation. “You couldn’t buy a light show like that with all the money in the world.”
Lucy disagreed. “Probably could, if you ask me.”
“Nobody asked, buzzkill,” Cecilia huffed.
Lucy wondered aloud as arcs of electricity crackled overhead and spread outward against the starless sky, lighting it up like a mad-scientist laboratory. Streaks of cool white, red-orange, and phosphorescent blue blinking as they enervated the canopy of c
louds.
“Looks like a spiderweb to me,” she said. “A trap.”
“That’s comforting,” Cecilia said.
“Or a CAT scan,” Agnes continued. “Veins and arteries of the sky. A CAT scan of heaven.”
“So romantic.” CeCe laughed.
“Thanks,” Agnes replied, without the least bit of irony.
Lucy suddenly felt the downy hair she resented having to bleach begin to stand on end. She looked up and around, as if for a ghost, and then to the others for verification that something had changed inside the room. She watched them open and close their jaws in a futile effort to fight the sudden pressure drop in their ears, and she did likewise. Lucy reached for her brow and Agnes for her bandaged wrists, the swelling becoming infinitely more painful. The air was electric and they tingled like antennae.
Wave upon wave of thunderclouds broke directly over the church, heaving grapefruit-size hail down without and within. The temperature in the building dropped almost instantly and the girls curled into tight balls, under assault from the frozen sleet, which was falling down around them.
A fierce rattle hummed through the building. They could feel the vibrations creep up their feet and into their legs. Another thundercrack and they shuddered, instinctively reaching for their ears. The candle flames waxed brightly, fed by the influx of oxygen, then waned almost to nothing, nearly extinguished in a fusillade of wind. One more lightning strike, stronger, brighter, and closer than before, was followed by the distant sound of shattering glass that almost seemed to come from behind the altar. And just as quickly as it came, the hail expended itself, replaced by a hard and cold rain.
“Wait here,” Sebastian ordered, leaping to his feet. “I’m going to check that out.”
“I’ll come with you,” Cecilia said.
“No,” Sebastian said firmly, taking them aback.
“I want to help you.”
“I’ll be back.”
“Be careful,” Agnes called after him.
Sebastian disappeared into the darkness. They could hear him walking and then lost him in the sounds of the stormy night. A door creaked at the front of the church and the familiar sound of a latch catching and then silence. He was gone.
“Help him?” Lucy scoffed, mocking Cecilia. “You were just looking to be alone with him.”
Cecilia rolled her eyes and changed the subject. There was more joke than spite in the comment and there was a noticeable thaw in the chilly distance between them.
With Sebastian gone, the girls felt more compelled to speak their minds, the dark, the cold, the uncertainty scratching at their stubbornness, wearing on them like a hair shirt.
“Do you think he stole these?” CeCe asked, fondling her bracelet.
“I don’t really care,” Lucy said. “I love it.”
“Okay, but why us?” CeCe asked. “We don’t know one another or him.”
They each gave it some quiet consideration until Agnes piped up. “But what about what he said? About them leading us here? I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve never been to this church before in my life. And suddenly, it seemed like the exact right place to go.”
“Maybe he’s a freak,” Cecilia said. “Probably just gave these out to the first three chicks he came across at the hospital.”
“You don’t really think that,” Agnes said.
“People do all kinds of crazy shit,” Lucy responded.
“Like sneaking into churches at night?” Agnes quipped.
“Why are you defending him?” Cecilia asked.
“I’m not,” Agnes said. “I just don’t see why we shouldn’t believe him.”
“Why?” Lucy barked. “How about he’s a total stranger, for a start.”
“That doesn’t make him a liar. I don’t know you, either, but I’m listening.”
“He’s not being up-front, Agnes,” Cecilia challenged. “I mean, what’s he doing here? Really?”
“Why don’t you ask him?” Agnes answered. “I’m sure there’s no great mystery.”
“I might give him a pass on that one for now,” Lucy countered. “We don’t even know why we’re here.”
Agnes raised her arm and brandished her chaplet proudly, like some fresh ink. “This is why.”
“Do you just believe everything a guy tells you without questioning anything?” Cecilia asked.
“I’m just saying, maybe they are really meant for us.”
“And I’m just saying I’m here for—what was it, three days?”
“Three Days of Darkness,” Lucy said, mocking the weatherman from the radio.
“Ye of little faith,” Agnes said sharply.
“Ye of little maturity,” Cecilia spit back.
They both looked at each other, overtired, oversensitive, and over the conversation for the moment.
“Anybody know what time it is?” CeCe asked.
“No idea,” Lucy said. “Very late. Or early.”
“Whichever, I can’t sit anymore,” CeCe said.
“Let’s check this place out,” Lucy suggested.
“Sebastian said to wait here,” Agnes reminded them.
“Suit yourself.” Lucy grabbed a handful of long tapers that had been left in a small pile on the floor near the votive stand. She offered one to Agnes. Agnes took it. They each lit theirs, fitted it with a foil bobeche, and walked slowly from the side altar at the back down the center aisle of the Church, wax dripping down the side with each step and hardening as it hit their knuckles. The light was just enough to guide them, for them to be able to see one another, but not so much as to draw attention from the world outside, if there was even a world left. The flames blew sideways despite their best efforts to shield them, useless against the stiff breeze that had managed to make its way through the broken windowpanes.
There was little to see. Lucy, Agnes, and Cecilia placed their tapers in the candleholders at the foot of the altar. CeCe lit a cigarette off the flaming stalk and inhaled.
“It’s like an end-stage cancer patient, you know.” Cecilia observed the surroundings, exhaling billows of smoke upward as she spoke. “A shell of something that was once so alive.”
“With a Do Not Resuscitate order,” Lucy nodded, waving the smoke away.
Streams of rainwater dropping through the damaged roof got Cecilia’s attention. She grabbed a few rusted holy water buckets stacked up next to the marble altar rail and handed them to Lucy and Agnes to place under the leaks.
Agnes chafed a little at the analogy, her own brush with death still fresh in her mind. “It’s not something to joke about.”
“No offense, but you get my point, right?” Cecilia groused. “This place was dying way before the developers bought it.”
“When you needed shelter from the storm, you came here. You get my point, right?” Agnes said.
“No need to get all self-righteous,” Lucy sniped. “Agnes is right. We all know why we’re here, whether we want to admit it to one another or not.”
“Speak for yourself,” CeCe said. “Why are you here?”
The tiff brought them right back to the earlier conversation they’d been dancing around. Sebastian argued that they were there by choice, but were they? The chaplets said otherwise.
“Same reason you are,” Lucy said tersely. “Not a lot of other options right now.”
“Is that right? You don’t look like much of a couch surfer to me,” CeCe observed.
“Spoiler alert,” Lucy said. “That’s because I don’t sleep around.”
“Sucks to be you,” CeCe shot back.
“Slide to unlock, huh?” Lucy cracked, swiping her imaginary touch screen sarcastically with unfettered ease.
Agnes eyed Cecilia sympathetically and shook her head.
The voices were getting louder as the argument descended ever deeper into pettiness. The vaulted ceiling captured the cacophony and ricocheted it back to them, amplifying the angst until their own voices became so echo-delayed and distorted they could barely unders
tand one another.
“What are you looking at?” Lucy barked at Agnes, her irritation overcoming whatever sympathy she initially had for the girl. “You’ve been staring at me since you got here.”
“Nothing,” Agnes replied sheepishly. “You just look familiar.”
“Yeah, you do,” Cecilia concurred. “In fact, I think I know you.”
“Believe me,” Lucy assured her. “You don’t know me.”
“I mean, I know of you.”
Lucy was mortified, the blood draining from her face like an underage clubhopper busted for flashing a fake ID. She braced for attack.
“Usually so meticulously groomed, well-dressed, and imperious-looking.” Cecilia scrutinized her. “Mascot of the rich and shameless.”
Lucy stood her ground, taking the punishment like a shock absorber. Glaring silently back at CeCe. A little mocking was nothing new to her.
“Oh, I’m sorry, aren’t I allowed to look you directly in the eye?”
“Wow,” Lucy chided in faux disbelief. “I never knew you could make toxic friends so fast.”
“Friends already?” Cecilia sniffed. “Maybe in your world.”
“Hard to believe that such a skinny slut can stand up straight with such a big chip on her shoulder.”
“I haven’t gotten any complaints,” CeCe huffed. “What’s your excuse?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lucy hissed. “I have guys lining up, for your information.”
“Photographers don’t count,” CeCe countered. “They’re paid to line up for you.”
“I don’t need to pay for my dates,” Lucy bristled. “And they don’t pay me, either.”
“No, you use each other for the photo, sell the rights, and split. You don’t date. You fund-raise.”
“I’m proud to sign my checks on the back. Not the front.”
Agnes was mystified at how venomous the bickering had turned. Just like the fights between her and her mother. She knew full well where this was headed.
Cecilia wouldn’t let it go. “Well, you look nothing like your pictures, but I won’t hold it against you in this weather.”
Suddenly, it dawned on Agnes as well. She gasped. “Lucky Lucy.”