The Blessed

Agnes focused her gaze upward at the walls and the others followed suit. A single word had been recently painted in black over and over in the empty spaces between the ancient Latin phrases originally inscribed in the gilt and plastered ceiling. Swirling. Twisting. Turning.

CIPHER.

“Jesus,” Cecilia whispered in awe.

“Sebastian,” Agnes whispered, voicing what they were all thinking.

“It’s like automatic writing,” Lucy muttered. “Real OCD shit.”

“More like graffiti, I’d say,” Cecilia added. “Some kind of warning.”

The heat and haze were oppressive. Worse than anything they’d ever experienced on even the hottest and muggiest summer day in the city.

“I’m . . . feeling . . . dizzy,” Agnes said, overcome, as she collapsed into Cecilia’s arms.

“Agnes!” Cecilia shouted, dropping to her knees with Agnes draped over her lap like a living pietà.

Lucy rushed to them, checking Agnes’s breathing and her heartbeat, feeling her forehead for fever.

“She’s burning up,” Lucy said, accusingly. “She should have left. We should have made her go.”

“Wake up. Please,” Cecilia begged, as she stroked Agnes’s long hair gently and supported her with the other arm. Agnes complied. She was delirious. Her body stiffened and her head snapped back.

“I think she’s having a seizure!” Lucy yelled.

“Ne discesseris a me,” Agnes moaned over and over again, spewing Latin as if in a trance. “Quoniam tribulatio proxima est quoniam non est qui adiuvet.”

Cecilia leaned back and Lucy’s eyes widened. Frightened. She looked up around her and brought her trembling hands to her lips at a sudden realization.

“Now I’m freaked out,” Lucy said. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Cecilia scolded. “She’s sick. It’s just random.”

“Cecilia,” Lucy stammered, pointing to a section of the wall above them. “She’s not babbling. She—she’s reading.”

“But her eyes are closed. . . . ” Cecilia’s voice trailed off.

“She looks possessed or something. Out of her mind.”

“Possessed? In a church? I—”

Lucy turned toward the door, alarmed by the sound of old hinges grinding and popping. Like barking. “Do you hear that? Dogs behind the door. Cecilia!”

She ran to the door and pushed it shut. Lucy stood with her back against it for a moment, eyes shut, needing to feel something solid, supportive, while she waited for the growls to fade. Relieved, she opened her eyes, but it was harder to see now. The slamming door extinguished the rows of votives, leaving just three alight, turning the chapel into a virtual cave, illuminated only by the burning wicks. Darkness fell over them like a shroud.

“We might be better off upstairs. Cecilia. Cecilia? Don’t you hear me?”

“I hear music.”

“What?”

Cecilia was expressionless, not from fear but deep in thought. Entranced. The color drained from her and her skin began to take on the amber hue of the candle flames. She swayed, trying to catch Agnes’s beat. Lucy ran for the door and pulled it closed.

“I understand,” Cecilia said in amazement. “I understand her. ‘Depart not from me. For tribulation is very near. And there is none to help me.’ ”

They repeated the words together, in time, like a prayer. Agnes in Latin, and Cecilia in English. The sound reverberated around the circular room, swirling.

“Stop it!” Lucy screamed, overwhelmed, grabbing for her face and falling to her knees, the others’ chant filling her ears. “Cecilia, something is so wrong here. What the hell is happening?”

Lucy looked up at the image of the Sacred Heart before her and felt her skin flush and heart begin to race as if she’d just run a marathon. As she tried desperately to calm herself, small beads of sweat began to collect in the pores of her face and scalp and tumble under their own weight down her forehead, cheeks, and chin. Black trails of blood seemed to flow from the heart, though she couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t just the tears streaking her eyes or water damage running through the cracked plaster. The image at the back wall began to undulate on the waves of mist.

“Do you see that?” she asked, trying to refocus through the smoke and glycerin. “It’s beating.”

Lucy was transfixed.

Cecilia laid Agnes gently on her back and stood.

“I see it too,” she said, staring until she’d become too dizzy to stand. Cecilia began to teeter, like a jumper on a narrow window ledge. Turning almost as pale as the bone in the chandelier above, she stumbled backward, slipping and falling into the iron maiden behind her with enough force that the cabinet doors closed in on her.

She was pierced, back, front, and side, by the small nails affixed to the interior of the cabinet, too many to count, and was forced to remain upright and still. An inch forward or back risked unimaginable agony. If this thing was meant to extract repentance or forgiveness, it wouldn’t take long, Cecilia was certain. She was frozen in place and in fear.

Trapped.

Numbed by pain.

Trying to remain conscious in the stifling heat.

Holding only a single thought.

We’re going to die.

She stood dazed and confused, in shock, staring through the cutouts for her eyes, pupils fixed and dilated at the gruesome scene unfolding before her powerlessly; the chapel awash in blood, sweat, tears, pus, and vomit. Bruised, battered, shamed, and cut, their insides draining slowly but surely out, like dirty oil from a cold car engine.

“Help me,” Cecilia called out in vain.

Lucy was shaken free from her trance by Cecilia’s wail and turned to the cabinet where she was imprisoned and saw it begin to shutter.

Cecilia let out an awful scream as she pushed the door open, calling upon her last bit of strength and sanity, nails piercing both palms front to back.

“My hands,” she moaned, sliding them off the spikes and dropping to her knees.

They twitched and trembled in her lap, blood and sweat pooling in the center of each palm.

Agnes crawled to CeCe and took her by the wrists, wiping the wounds over her face and hair, the gore drying into a horrible red mask on her face and caking her curls.

She resumed her entreaties with even greater fervor, picking at her soiled bandages, slowly at first, and then tore at them, seeking any relief for the claustrophobia they were inflicting on her, like a prisoner trying to slip handcuffs. The wrappings fell to the floor, filling the room with the foul stench of decay.

Agnes recited:

“Cor meum tamquam cera liquescens in medio ventris mei.

Ipsi vero consideraverunt et inspexerunt me.

Concilium malignantium obsedit me.

Sicut aqua effusus sum et dispersa sunt universa

ossa mea factum.”3

Lucy began to gag, choking on the odor. Unable to hold it back any longer, she purged, gushing a bile-filled, watery puke caused partially by the stink of rotting flesh and partially by the pain in her head. She crawled down the short aisle toward the altar to find an unstained space, dry heaving all the way.

Finally, Lucy collapsed.

Agnes continued to chant, offering a surreal narration to their torment.

“Mei animam meam circumdederunt super me.”4

“Lucy,” Cecilia moaned. “Get out of here. Find Sebastian.”

Lucy heard, but instead walked toward the mirror that had vexed her earlier. She stared at her reflection, at her eyes, which appeared now to glow and made her dizzy once again. She fell headfirst into the glass. One by one, rough shards of mirror pierced her head. She did not move. She stood there and took it.

Another.

And another.

Embedding themselves into her scalp until they formed a halo around her head. She looked at herself in the cracked mirror, blood flowing from her wounds. The reflection in each shard was of her own eyes, looking back at her in the remnants of the cracked mirror.

“Judge not, that you may not be judged,” Agnes whispered.

Lucy reached for her ears.

Agnes crawled toward the votive stand, gazing at the low light of the candle flame and stretched her hand out stiffly above it, like a curious child over a hot stove. She lowered it gradually, drops of Cecilia’s still-fresh blood dripping from her hand into the candle cup and sizzling, until it was perched near enough to the flame to hurt, her long hair near enough to ignite. As the frayed ends began to catch, the acrid smell of burning hair mixed with the rankness of the room.

Through the haze she appeared to Lucy, who was now lying on a mirror bed made of shards, as a pathetic wraith, damned to infinitely repeat a ritual that might one day earn forgiveness for her. Agnes whispered:

“Dinumeraverunt omnia ossa mea.”5

Lucy mustered the strength to grab her heels and put them on to protect her feet from further injury caused by debris, and hobbled over to Agnes. Before she could grab her hand and hair away from the flame, Agnes turned and faced her. She held her hand up, palm facing Lucy, a silent sign to stop where she was.

“You’re sick,” Lucy insisted, hoping to bully some sense into her. “This isn’t you.”

“It is,” Agnes said. “It’s all of us.”

Agnes looked right through her as if she wasn’t there. A thousand-yard stare to cover a matter of inches.

The room was a split screen of pain and suffering, and Lucy didn’t know which way to turn, who to help first when she couldn’t even help herself. She understood how insanity could pounce on even the soundest and sharpest mind, which she always considered to be hers. The closeness of madness was overwhelming and keeping it at bay, a losing battle. Insanity beckoned. She kept telling herself deep breath, to put herself back in her body, but she couldn’t manage to take one.

“Seeing is believing,” Agnes mocked and started to giggle, her bloodstained face and hands almost disappearing in the dimness, giving the impression of a headless, limbless torso floating in space. “How do I look?”

“This is supposed to be a holy place!” Lucy cried. But her pleas were stifled by an explosive pain, the worst of them all. Molten wax from the candelabra rained down, droplets of fire splashing Lucy’s eyes, face, and hair. She was glazed, coated, like a mold. She felt as if her eyelids had been glued closed and her eyes cooked into gooey marbles in their sockets.

Blinded.

Suffocating.

Without mercy.

“I . . . can’t . . . see.”

Her instinct was to rip it away, but she didn’t. Instead she ran her trembling fingers along the cooling ridges of textured mass, the second skin that covered her. She had the sense of molting, but in reverse. Of being encased, like a wick inside one of the tapers, waiting for a match to ignite her, set her aflame and consume her.

Lucy fell to her knees.

Agnes’s recitations became more manic, more urgent.

Pleading.

“Petite et dabitur vobis quaerite et invenietis

pulsate et aperietur vobis.

Omnis enim qui petit accipit et qui quaerit

invenit et pulsanti aperietur.”6

“Sebastian!” CeCe cried desperately with what little strength she had left.

“Somebody, please. Help us!”

Suddenly, a shrill wail from the other side of the chapel pierced the silence.

“God,” Agnes screamed, as if waking from a horrible nightmare, in desperation. “Help us.”

Agnes cried out a final time:

“Adtendite a falsis prophetis qui veniunt ad vos in vestimentis

ovium intrinsecus autem sunt lupi rapaces.”7

The room fell silent as each lost consciousness. They couldn’t be sure how long it was before they came to. Both time and their suffering seemed to have stopped in that very moment.

A hand beneath her head and another clawing at her eyes awoke Lucy. They were Sebastian’s hands. She didn’t need her eyes to tell her that. She heard Agnes and Cecilia coughing and calling out for each other as he gently removed the last bits of wax. At least, she thought, they were alive.

“I’m with you,” he said. “You are with me.”

“Sebastian,” Lucy said, gratefully. “I can see.”





“Up?” the cheery elevator operator asked.

Jesse nodded and stepped in nervously. This elevator cab looked ancient to him. Art deco tiling on the floor and walls, deco lighting fixture attached to the ceiling. Polished brass railings. Reminded him of the elevators in his grandparents’ fancy Park Avenue prewar building, which always smelled vaguely of musty carpet and old people.

Jesse was dripping, his carefully coiffed ’do flattened, puddles forming at his feet. The momentary lull in the storm that had seduced him over to the hospital to meet Dr. Frey in person was nothing more than a meteorological headfake. But even the sudden cloudburst that assaulted him as he approached the hospital lobby couldn’t dampen his curiosity. He had to find out about Lucy.

The operator smiled. “Brought the storm inside with you I see. Floor?”

Jesse was put off, suspicious even. He figured the guy was trained to keep it light for the incoming patients’ benefit. Which was fine, except he wasn’t a patient and wasn’t keen to be seen as or treated as one.

“Top.”

He didn’t know the exact number and couldn’t bring himself to name it.

The operator slid the collapsible gate closed, pushed the car switch forward, and engaged the pulley motor. The cab jerked upward and the operator turned and smiled at him yet again and returned to position, facing forward, watching the elevator car pass floor after floor on the way to the top. He felt as if he’d just been caged and both his claustrophobia and paranoia began to kick in. It didn’t help matters that he was taking a ride to a psych ward. Jesse grabbed the railing and hung on, counting the floors as they passed. From his neurotic behavior he wondered if the elevator guy would take him for a visitor or a patient. It was late after all, well after hours, and with the storm raging, unlikely that anyone but the most desperate headcases would brave the elements. A visit could wait. An appointment could not.

“Penthouse,” the operator announced, sliding the gate open. “Have a nice day, sir.”

Jesse exhaled and jumped off quickly without saying a word. He wasn’t much for chitchat under the best circumstances and didn’t feel the need to exchange niceties with a hired hand.

The elevator gate swung closed behind him and he stepped cautiously into the waiting area. The shiny floors and the wet soles of his shoes were not a good match. He extended his long arms outward like wings to balance himself as his feet slid treacherously along the slickened linoleum, laughing nervously to himself that if the operator could see him now, he’d have little doubt about Jesse’s mental status. A real live loony bird had just flown into the cuckoo’s nest.

There was no reception desk, just an unmanned nurses’ station. He looked around for help and caught a glimpse of the inmates in the distance, wandering the halls.

It was exactly as he’d imagined it. As he’d feared.

Too warm. Colorless walls. Easy-clean floors and countertops. No sharp edges to be found anywhere. Lots of sanitizer. Pens chained to desks. And the smell. Stale and rubbery like vulcanized piss. Worst of all were the dead-eyed patients, sewing imaginary holes and lifting imaginary packages, staring out windows at imaginary worlds, having imaginary conversations. Mostly with themselves, occasionally at each other.

“Mr. Arens?”

“What?” he said, startled.

His jittery rudeness was matched only by the nurse’s indifference.

“Dr. Frey can see you now.”

He followed the nurse down the hall and into the chief of psychiatry’s office.

He passed by door after door, each with a small observation window of thick glass reinforced with chicken wire positioned at about eye level. Glancing through each as he walked, all the everyday yet seldom-seen horrors of mental illness were on full display, none of it unsurprising. Men and women in restraints, agitated and struggling to get free, others sedated, unconscious, finding freedom or peace in only their dreams. One thing he had not expected to see was a child. A young boy, his head bowed, hands folded across his waist, sitting completely still as if he were praying.

Jesse stopped.

The boy lifted his head and stared directly at Jesse. Their eyes met. The boy shook his head slightly from side to side and returned to his prayer.

“Let’s not keep Dr. Frey waiting,” the nurse called back to him.

Jesse resumed his trek toward Frey’s office, which was now in view. His last few steps took him past several white-walled examination and treatment rooms and finally near a door next to Frey’s office that was different from the rest. It was heavier, thicker, made of metal, not wood. The room was dark except for a single amber light that hung from the ceiling. Beneath it sat a man, big, beefy, and bald. He looked vaguely familiar but shadows fell so deeply into his scarred and pock-marked face that it took Jesse a moment to recognize him.

“Sicarius,” he whispered almost reverently.

There he was. The star of many a boyhood nightmare. As close to a real live boogeyman as Brooklyn ever had. Proof positive, Jesse remembered his parents saying, that monsters really did exist. An infamous serial child-killer who terrorized the borough for months nearly a decade earlier and beat the death penalty rap with a successful insanity defense. Jesse was both appalled and intrigued by his presence.

“Mr. Arens!” the nurse insisted.

Her “can’t you read the sign” tone of voice was like a zookeeper’s commanding a visitor not to feed the wild animals.

Jesse backed away and finished his walk into Frey’s office, still a bit disoriented by what he’d seen. He fidgeted briefly in his chair, pulling the wet clothes from his skin impatiently when the doctor arrived.

“Mr. Arens, I’m Dr. Frey,” he said, stepping behind his desk and reaching his hand across it to Jesse. “Thank you for coming. I know it couldn’t have been easy to get here.”

Jesse took hold of it only briefly, not wanting to catch any crazy bugs that might be floating around.

“Yeah,” Jesse said. “On the news they were saying even crime has hit record lows, there are so few people on the streets. Looks like they keep you pretty busy around here though.”

“Yes,” the doctor said, dismissing the teen’s insensitivity. “Very busy. Mental illness is a silent epidemic, one that doesn’t discriminate or stop for storms.”

“Not even for kids or killers,” Jesse said, still disturbed by what he’d seen in the hallway.

“You are observant, as a person in your line of work should be,” Frey complimented. “The boy, Jude, is prone to sudden violent outbursts. He comes and goes. We monitor him mostly as an outpatient.”

“He didn’t look violent,” Jesse noted.

“It starts young,” Frey advised. “Children. Teenagers. Always best to nip it in the bud when you can. Looks can be deceiving, as the saying goes.”

“Nothing deceiving about the way Sicarius looks,” Jesse parried.

“Oh, he’s harmless as long as he’s being treated, and he’s quite restricted as you saw,” Frey responded. “I keep him very close by.”

Harmless. That wasn’t the first thought that came to Jesse’s mind, but Frey was the doctor, a very respected one he’d heard, and he should know best. Besides, the Perpetual Help Psych Ward treatment program was not the reason for his visit. “Why am I here, Doctor?”

“As I mentioned, your friend Lucy,” Frey began.

“I hope you didn’t ask me here to tell me she’s a lunatic,” Jesse warned. “First of all, I know that. Second, I’m the only one who can say it.”

“Loyalty is an admirable trait,” Frey said. “I’m sure it’s mutual.”

Jesse was silent.

“As I was saying,” Frey continued. “You say your friend is missing.”

“A bouncer at the nightclub where I last saw her found her phone in the street. She’s not at home and no one we know has seen her. I’m hoping it’s just the storm, but . . . ”

“But you have a bad feeling,” Frey said, completing his thought. “You have good instincts. No wonder you are so successful.”

Flattery. Something to which Jesse was quite susceptible.

“Yes,” Jesse agreed. “But this isn’t the missing persons bureau, so what has that got to do with you?”

“I think I may know what happened to her.”

The doctor reached calmly behind him for a set of files and set them down. He flipped to a small stack of photos and began to explain. Jesse was listening.

“There was a patient here. A young man named Sebastian. A very sick young man.”

Jesse casually examined the picture. It was of a guy, about his age. He was striking, magnetic, with sharp features, deep-set eyes, and faraway gaze. Jesse was surprised he hadn’t seen him around but from what the doctor said, Sebastian had other priorities. It was a shame, Jesse thought. A guy with his looks and presence could go places with the right people behind him. But even in the photo, it was clear to Jesse that this guy was somewhere else entirely in his mind.

“This is a nuthouse, Doctor. Isn’t everyone here very sick?”

“Not like him.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“He has certain ideations,” Frey explained. “I won’t bore you with the clinical details, but he is quite dangerous.”

“To himself or to others?”

“Both.”

“This patient escaped from here the other night. We think he got out through the ER. He is still free.”

“Do you mind, Doctor?”

Jesse reached for his notepad. The one he normally used to chronicle the comings and goings of up-and-coming celebstitutes whose story might travel to the mainstream media and weekly rags. This was different.

“Please,” Frey said approvingly. “It was the same night that your friend came into the ER.”

“Are you saying she was involved in his disappearance somehow? Not likely. First of all, she’s much too selfish to help anybody.”

“No, I’m saying that he might be involved in hers. He didn’t just escape you see. A man is dead.”

Kidnapping. Murder. Insanity. This was front-page stuff, Jesse thought, as he felt the inside of his mouth dry up and his throat begin to close slightly. He was inexperienced in this kind of reporting, in fact, in any real reporting at all, and he was starting to feel he might be in over his head. “And you think he might have Lucy? Why?”

Frey pulled up Jesse’s own site and scrolled down to a BYTE bit from a few nights before. “Do you remember this photo?”

“Of course I remember it. I took it. I was right there when it happened.”

“What do you see?”

“I see two hot chicks rolling around a VIP room.”

“Look closer,” Frey said.

Jesse stared at the image, struggling to find some kind of wardrobe malfunction or up-skirt sneak peek that he’d overlooked when posting.

“I don’t really notice anything else but a bracelet.”

“Yes! That’s right.”

Jesse was a bit confused. Frey was well-dressed but he didn’t seem to be much of a fashion hound, judging from his fairly traditional button-down and khaki outfit. Not the sort of person to pay much mind to a bracelet.

“So? It’s nice,” Jesse said. “I got flooded with e-mails and texts from girls wanting to know where she got it. Even more so than usual.”

“I know where she got it,” the doctor said.

Frey opened the folder on top of his desk and pushed it toward Jesse. It contained three photographs, each of a similar bracelet, with different charms dangling from them. One was identical to the bracelet that Lucy was wearing at the club.

“What is it, some kind of devil sign?” Jesse said, pointing to the charm.

“No, quite the opposite. It is a milagro. The kind of emblem you often find hanging from rosary beads, pinned inside of garments, or affixed to chaplets like these.”

“What’s so special about them?”

“I’m not sure but they were special enough to him that he stole them from the old chapel beneath the Church of the Precious Blood.”

A relic thief. Jesse wasn’t very impressed. The church had been a construction site for a while. Maybe he wanted a souvenir or something to pawn. It sounded more like a prank to Jesse than some mysterious plot.

“I’m not sure where you are going with this. Lucy’s not religious, Doctor. The only appeal of that bracelet to her would be as an accessory. She could have found it on the street for all I know.”

“When he arrived here, we took them from him. Three of them. When he left, they were gone.”

“You think he gave them to Lucy. Intentionally?”

The idea of gifting a stranger with prayer beads was something Jesse had only seen on street corners and music festivals upstate, but then again this guy was crazy.

“Coincidentally, two other girls were admitted to the emergency room on that night. Both are missing.”

Jesse stared at the photo of the chaplet intently.

“Two and three?” he said, solemnly.

“Precisely,” the doctor said. “The second girl was reported missing yesterday by her mother. Agnes Fremont is her name. A suicide attempt. I evaluated her myself.”

“And the third?”

“A musician who plays clubs around Brooklyn and the Bowery . . . Cecilia Trent.”

“Sounds familiar,” Jesse said, searching his mental file until her name clicked. “She’s hot. Critic’s darling. Dresses over-the-top. She’s got a small following I think. Superfan types. I almost wrote something about her once.”

“Her concerts were inexplicably canceled the past few nights. Odd because she’s never missed a show before. No matter what the weather, as I found out. She only lives across the street from the dive where she was supposed to do these shows acoustically. The club stayed open for the locals, blackout and all.”

“Yeah, she’s the kind that would play to an empty room if they’d have her,” Jesse acknowledged. “But then this really is some end-of-the-world shit going on outside. Who could blame her for not showing?”

Jesse was starting to feel uneasy, as if a narrative was being planted in his brain.

Frey pushed the folder with CeCe’s picture in it closer to Jesse.

“Does this look like a girl who is afraid of a little rain?”

Jesse balked at the massive understatement. “A little rain?”

Frey just grinned.

The doctor was persuasive, Jesse had to admit. But then, Frey was the man who got Sicarius off, wasn’t he? Jesse stood abruptly and backed away from the desk, a chill running down his spine.

“Why tell me all this, Doctor? This is really a matter for the police.”

“The police are on it but the storm slowed everything down, including the investigation. All their resources are assigned to emergency services. Until it blows over, and then the cleanup begins.”

“And the death?”

“Has been reported as accidental for the time being and buried in the papers by the storm coverage,” Frey said. “Interested?”

Jesse couldn’t help himself. His ego kicked in.

“Interested.”

“This is a dangerous guy and he needs to be found as quickly as possible. Before he can do any further harm to these girls.”

“Yes.”

“Of course, if you attribute any of this to me, I will deny it, so I’m trusting you to keep this confidential.”

“I’m good at keeping secrets, Doctor.”

“Good. I don’t think you want to get into a credibility contest with me.”

“Threats? So soon?”

“I’m handing you your future, Jesse. This is the sort of story that makes careers.”

“A regular deal with the devil.”

“Not quite,” the doctor said.

“Just one more question, Doctor,” Jesse asked. “You said he was dangerous. Delusional. What exactly do you mean?”

The doctor paused for an uncomfortably long time. Taking a minute to choose his words carefully.

“He believes that he’s on a mission.”

“Mission? Is he some kind of whacked-out vet with PTSD?”

“Preparing the way,” Frey said.

“What way? For who?”

“Who do you think?”

“No. Way,” Jesse stammered, as Frey’s meaning became clearer.

“He believes . . . ”

“Believes what?”

“He believes he is a saint.”