Precious Blood

  “Yes, well, their mission was derailed, so to speak,” Frey shot back sarcastically.

  “Yes, until Sebastian. He understood and tried to make others understand. A herald. But instead of being believed, he was betrayed.”

  “These are ravings of that old lady who raised him.”

  “She was a holy woman.”

  “She was a witch. You said so yourself.”

  Monsignor Piazza stood defiantly in her defense and Sebastian’s.

  “Not a witch. She practiced Benedicaria. The Way of Blessing. She passed this knowledge on to him.”

  “Knowledge? This is medieval voodoo for the ignorant masses. She filled his impressionable mind with this nonsense. A lonely, orphaned boy wanting to feel special. The shame of it!”

  Piazza looked at the physician with contempt.

  “She filled him with faith and fire. He could recognize malevolence in others that even I could not. I see that now, and I pray that God forgives me for my blindness.”

  “I’m not here to revisit the past with you, Monsignor. I don’t have time.”

  “Then why are you here really, Doctor? You don’t think I’m hiding him in here, do you?”

  “Before he escaped, he said there were others. Did he ever discuss such a thing with you? Did he have friends or acquaintances he confided in?”

  “Others,” the priest repeated, as if he had just received word of a miracle he’d waited for his whole life. “As a priest, I couldn’t tell you if he had. The Seal of Confession.”

  “This is not the time for antiquated vows, Father,” Frey lectured. “You care about the boy, don’t you? About his well-being. He may not survive this if the police find him first. There may be hostages.”

  The priest was rapidly tiring of the doctor’s altruistic facade. He had been fooled once before.

  “What will be left of him if you find him first?”

  “Life is better than death, Monsignor.”

  “Not at the cost of your soul, Doctor.”

  “I can save him. Save him from himself.”

  “Your compassion is most touching. After all, we wouldn’t want to make a martyr of him, so to speak?” The priest’s voice dripped with the wry and combative condescension he had been known for in his younger days. Piazza had gotten under the doctor’s skin. The veneer of civility torn asunder, Frey’s frustration now drove him past the point of politeness.

  “He is mad,” the doctor opined. “Illnesses like these are contagious among the weak-willed, the vulnerable, the depressed, Father. Dangerous.”

  “Dangerous to whom? You speak of the spread of faith like a disease.”

  “All this talk about faith and souls. It is from a different time. Haven’t we finally grown past this, Father?”

  “I don’t know. Have we? You seem quite troubled by something you don’t believe.”

  “Fairy stories! Lies! Meant to control the mind and behavior of people for what? For money? Power?”

  “Like the drugs you prescribe, Doctor, to alter minds and control behavior. What do you fear from Sebastian that brings you here? Maybe the psychiatrist should ask himself that question.”

  The doctor struggled to keep his composure. “Show me a soul,” he railed. “What does it look like? Feel like? Taste like? What does it weigh? Show me a soul and I’ll believe you. And Sebastian.”

  “Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed.”

  “Blessed,” Frey mumbled. “That’s the problem, isn’t it?”

  “For you, Doctor. For me, a solution.”

  “That old church was an eyesore, running on fumes for years, Monsignor. No one came and no one will miss it, thanks in large measure to your incompetence. It serves no purpose any longer except as a future apartment block for stockbrokers and their families. On which I expect to earn a substantial return.”

  Monsignor Piazza took his argument under advisement and arrived at a different conclusion. He knew now that Precious Blood had retained its purpose, even if it had a congregation of only one. Or four.

  “Perhaps you are right,” he said. “Perhaps not.”

  “Look around you,” Frey suggested, pointing out the antique furnishings of the residence. “Your time has passed.”

  “I’ll reserve my right to a second opinion, Doctor,” the Monsignor replied defiantly, a sly smile crossing his lips. “I think we are done. I know you. I know your kind. You will not get what you seek from me. Not this time.”

  “The decision to turn the boy over was yours; don’t blame me,” Frey said. “It is too late for regret now.”

  “It’s never too late.”

  The vesper bells ceased. Piazza blessed himself and his unwelcome guest as he departed.

  “Don’t waste your time,” Frey scoffed.

  As the gray light of late afternoon squeezed past the edges of the warping window boards, the Church of the Precious Blood was revealed in all of its decrepit glory. Sebastian was sitting silently in front of the church. Agnes and Cecilia walked the perimeter of the nave and were soon joined by Lucy, who appeared to have an honesty hangover. They stopped to notice odd markings on the wall, fourteen in all, evenly spaced and about head-high, shapes more than anything else but not instantly recognizable until Agnes put it together. These were shadows burned into the plaster walls, bordered now by peeling paint and sawdust, following decades of exposure to the rising and setting sun.

  “The Stations,” Agnes said.

  “The Stations of the Cross,” Lucy added.

  “Stations of the Lost, more like,” Cecilia nodded, noting the missing icons.

  “I don’t get it,” Lucy said out loud, shaking her head. “Never did.”

  Something they could all agree on.

  “A man is humiliated, tortured, and killed for what?” Lucy pondered. “So a pretend rabbit can crap a basket of chocolate-covered crème eggs and jelly beans.”

  “You could say there is beauty in suffering,” Agnes said almost wistfully, calling attention, however unwittingly, to her self-inflicted wounds. “And sacrifice.”

  “You’re not comparing yourself, are you? We’re not talking curfew fights with your mom or issues with your boyfriend here,” Lucy said, pointing up to the VI standing out from the faded paint around it. “This is anguish on a whole different level.”

  “Talk about carrying the weight of the world,” Cecilia said, scrutinizing each image as they continued walking. “Puts your own problems in perspective.”

  “You think . . . ?” Lucy said.

  They began their walk, as Sebastian watched from the head altar, finishing up a makeshift meal for them.

  I, II . . .

  Cecilia stopped at number two. She stood there in front of an image of this holy, loving man carrying a cross through a crowd of people. A heavy burden that he so willingly took on. Being lashed and spit on.

  III, IV, V, VI . . .

  Agnes stopped at number six. She sat down in the pew in front of it. She stared at an image of a beautiful woman, on her knees, in front of Jesus, who was suffering, carrying his cross. She was holding up a gauzy white veil, about to wipe his beautiful face.

  “That’s all she had. All she could do. And that gave him strength,” she said in amazement.

  VII, VIII, IX, X . . .

  Lucy was stricken by number ten. Jesus was stripped of his garments. How humiliating it must have been for him, being stripped almost naked, flesh on his cloak because he was so mangled from his journey, stripped of his dignity. As they prepared his cross in front of him. He would die with no worldly possessions.

  After a meditative moment of silence, they gathered together again and continued their walk.

  XI, XII . . .

  “This,” Lucy realized suddenly, at number twelve, “is what I was talking about. This is big.”

  Jesus Dies on the Cross.

  “Jesus Christ, superstar?” Agnes chided. “Is that your point?”

  “I did that in middle school. I w
as Mary Magdalene,” Cecilia said with a shrug.

  “Shocker,” Lucy said, then suddenly reached again for her brow and fell backward onto the wall behind her.

  “This symbol of the cross is recognizable to everyone for all time. You see it and you instantly know the story. You feel something. You understand,” Agnes said.

  “The difference between a flash in the pan and eternal fame,” Lucy said. “Talk about branding.”

  “There’s meaning,” Cecilia said. “Everyone can relate to suffering and sacrifice to some degree.”

  Lucy felt a sharp shooting pain behind her eye pulse and then spend itself, leaving a path of floaties in its wake, like the last gasp of a July Fourth sparkler. Cecilia reached to hold her up, but Lucy waved her away.

  “That’s a nasty-looking bruise,” Cecilia observed. “I wish we had some ice.”

  “I’m okay.” Lucy staggered into a seat in a pew and stared up at the wall she’d just been leaning against. It had to be a mixture of last night and the Stations. She remembered being frightened by them as a child. It was like some sort of horrific flipbook, watching a man unjustly accused, convicted, humiliated, tortured, and nailed to a cross. It all seemed so inevitable, a condition she’d been fighting her entire life. In fact, nothing scared her more. “He was the Son of God. How could he let himself get sucker punched like that?” Lucy murmured. “I mean, Jesus Christ already.”

  “The fix was in,” Cecilia said. “He played the hand he was dealt.”

  “And he knew it,” Sebastian added, coming up behind them. His face hardened as he stared at theirs. The look of distress was plain. He joined them for the last two Stations.

  XIII . . .

  Jesus Is Taken Down from the Cross. They beheld a gorgeous painting in front of them, of Jesus, now with a gold halo, being caressed by his loved ones. Prayed over. Adored.

  “I do love how they take the agony and suffering of the reality and mythologize it in such a beautiful, glorified way,” Cecilia said. “It’s just a story anyway.”

  “Yeah, but a good one,” Sebastian said.

  “Greatest Story Ever Told,” Agnes added.

  “So they say.” Lucy nodded.

  “One that people were once willing to die for,” Sebastian said.

  “And kill for,” CeCe added, noting the other side of the coin.

  “Religions are just people. Some good, some not,” Sebastian said. “Like everything else. Can’t blame Jesus for all of it.”

  “There are assholes everywhere,” CeCe said.

  “A sermon we can all get behind,” he concurred.

  “You know the old priest in The Exorcist played Jesus in that movie The Greatest Story Ever Told. I met him at a premiere,” Lucy added.

  “Only you would name-drop Jesus,” Cecilia said.

  XIV . . .

  Jesus Was Laid in His Tomb.

  As they reached the last station, Lucy was feeling detached, not from the others but from her body. She wasn’t totally sure if she was there, or anywhere at all. She felt like she was floating, watching the whole scene play out from about ten feet above the ground. It happened to her sometimes at crowded clubs, but never in a quiet, laid-back situation like this. It wasn’t just Lucy. They were all starting to feel strange. The wind pounded, the thunder rolled and lightning flashed, but it was a less violent sound, coming from the church entrance, that really got their attention. Especially Sebastian’s.

  “Who’s that?” Agnes said, on high alert.

  The church door slid open just a crack but it was loud enough for the occupants to hear. The girls instinctively crouched down behind the pews; they did not want to be found. Sebastian remained standing, like a shaft rising from the floor.

  “Are you expecting someone else?” Lucy whispered over to him.

  “No.”

  A lone figure hobbled through the vestibule and into the church, pushed forward by the wind, undeterred by the darkness. Even in the dark, Sebastian could tell the man was slight, frail, probably old, far too old to brave these elements at this twilight hour.

  Sebastian kept watch.

  The girls could hear the anonymous footsteps approaching.

  “Who is it?” Lucy whispered nervously.

  The man moved slowly, but confidently, forward. He clearly knew his way around. Sebastian recognized his walk, his outline, even in the candlelight.

  “Father Piazza.”

  He stopped and turned his head from side to side, up and down, peering out into the darkness. Looking like someone who’d returned to his hometown after many years, only to find it changed, altered, but not completely beyond recognition. Just enough of it remaining to reminisce over or mourn for. He hadn’t been back since the church had been deconsecrated and his parishioners scattered to other churches, not even to see it from the outside. But now he had to come, even in such a horrific storm. Risking his own life if it were the last thing he ever did. Piazza recalled his tepid effort to save the church and the congregation from the developers and his relief that he had failed. He was preparing for retirement after all, and even the diocese was in no mood to increasingly subsidize yet another money-losing facility. Sebastian had been the last piece of unresolved business for him. He loved the boy and tried hard, along with the city caseworker, to find a good home for him in the community. Time after time, he tried. Time after time, he failed. Sebastian was becoming increasingly unstable. Acting out. Talking crazy. Blasphemy. Making himself unwelcome to even the most sympathetic foster family. Because of depression over his grandmother’s death, teenage hormones, or something far more serious, the priest could not be sure. What else could he have done, he thought, but do as he did? Piazza accessed the network of upper-crust physicians he’d befriended over the years on the boy’s behalf. Frey’s reputation was impeccable. If anyone could turn the boy around, bring him some peace, it was he.

  The monsignor sighed resignedly. His shoulders slumped as he exhaled, continuing down the aisle. The place was a shambles. The hand-cut and tumbled marble and terrazzo floors were covered in dirt, ornately carved and finished wooden pews torn from their anchors and piled up against the side entrances, scaffolds rose to heights only the voices of the faithful had once reached, skids were piled with gypsum board and plumbing in front of empty pedestals where brightly painted statues of holy men and women were once worshipped. Who could he blame for this? For Sebastian?

  Only himself.

  The old priest approached the altar, step by step, until he reached the center of the church, where he genuflected, crossed himself, bowed his head, fell to his knees, and clasped his hands in fervent, whispered prayer.

  “quia peccavi nimis

  cogitatione, verbo

  opere et omissione”

  “What is he saying?” Lucy asked.

  “He’s confessing,” Sebastian explained, eyes fixed on the penitent priest.

  Piazza halted and beat his chest with his fist one time, the deafening thud of his arthritic hand against his breastbone like a body falling from a building.

  “Mea culpa.”

  And again:

  “Mea culpa.”

  And for a final time, nearly in tears.

  “MEA MAXIMA CULPA.”

  Father Piazza rose and stared straight ahead at the altar and the silhouette of Sebastian before him.

  “Sebastian!” he called out with all his strength.

  Agnes panicked. “How does he know you’re here?”

  “Quiet,” Cecilia said, bringing her hand to Agnes’s mouth.

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Your path is a lonely one made lonelier by my acts.”

  “I’m not alone,” Sebastian said. “I never was.”

  Lucy, Cecilia, and Agnes rose from behind the pew. Confused by the exchange, but no longer feeling the need to hide. The priest could not see their faces, but the chaplets gleamed around their wrists in the dim light.

  Father Piazza was overwhelmed. “They will be coming for you.?
??

  “I know.”

  “I am sorry,” Piazza said, his voice cracking with emotion.

  Sebastian let the words echo around the cavernous space until they faded to nothing.

  The monsignor raised his shaking hand in blessing, as he had countless times before within the hallowed walls of Precious Blood, and made the sign of the cross.

  “Peace be with you,” Sebastian said.

  “And with your spirit.” The priest bowed his head to Sebastian, then to the girls, and turned and walked away. A procession of one. Back from whence he came.

  “Father,” Sebastian called out. “Did you forget something?”

  “Yes.” The priest stopped, looked at all of them standing there. He would take them and any information about them to his grave. “Everything.”

  “That was . . . strange,” Lucy rasped.

  “A man praying?” Sebastian shot back tersely.

  “You know what I mean,” Lucy pushed back. “For an old man to come out in a storm like this, it must have been important.”

  “Yeah, a matter of life and death,” Cecilia said. “He really risked it out there.”

  “Who is he?” Agnes asked, her curiosity piqued.

  “His name is Piazza. He was the pastor here for many years. He just made the most important trip he’ll ever make.”

  “Did you know him well?” Agnes asked gently.

  “I thought so,” Sebastian responded, the hurt and betrayal in his voice unmistakable.

  “Are you in some kind of trouble?” Cecilia asked him protectively. “You can tell us.”

  She recalled how wary he’d looked at the hospital when they first met.

  “He said people are coming for you?” Agnes pressed. “Is it the police?”

  “It’s nothing I can’t handle.”

  “We,” Agnes stressed. “Whatever or whoever it is, we can handle it.”

  “Together,” Cecilia said.

  Even Lucy joined in. “I know people who can probably help. Whatever it is.”

  “That means everything to me,” Sebastian said at their willingness to be there for him, and more importantly, their camaraderie.

  A melancholy expression of happiness and regret shone from him. Sebastian rubbed at his temples and stood up, putting a full stop on the question-and-answer session. As if he’d received a cue he’d been waiting for.