The Blessed - By Tonya Hurley Page 0,59
them, even for a few moments, but he could feel the time running out. Making his way through the scattered boards, beams, and rusting remnants of bronze window grilles that blocked his path, he reached the top and took a deep breath of the murky air hanging about him.
From the belfry, he surveyed the brownstones below through an angry sky as the dark and threatening clouds skimmed the Borough of Churches. The stained glass had been shattered and unreplaced from the tracery, the steel lattice swayed uncertainly around him, several windows already uncovered by the gale force winds that continued to batter them. Colorful shards from the broken panes littered the floor of the tower and main roof beneath him. The splinters glittered and blinked like Christmas lights. Those lights, he thought, usually herald a joyous occasion, but not these.
The tower had been unused for years, long before the building had been closed by the diocese and targeted by the local developers. It didn’t even have a bell. Why bother, he considered, calling people to prayer who weren’t coming anyway?
He stood waiting, like a sentry, like some twenty-first-century Quasimodo, keeping watch over his decrepit domain and his three Esmeraldas. They were together now. He felt their presence not just around him but inside of him as surely as he had at the hospital that night. The night he got away from Frey. Got to them. He could have never imagined that would be the easy part. He wanted to tell them everything but knew he could not. But the time was drawing near. Would they even believe him?
Sebastian strained to eye the harbor in the distance and Manhattan beyond, enshrouded in a light fog that was rolling toward him, across the East River to the piers that stretched along the coastline from Red Hook to Vinegar Hill. From this stone-and-mortar perch above, he imagined himself the captain of a besieged vessel, charged with transporting precious cargo to a far distant shore through stormy seas and jagged reefs. Surrounded by enemy ships, unseen but ever present.
Much easier to spy from this vantage point was the design of the church directly beneath him. From the inside, the church simply appeared huge and cavernous. So familiar and like all other churches in that little thought was ever given to its blueprint. But up here, the purpose was more evident. Transepts stretched outward, like open arms, on either side from the nave, or center portion of the building. It was in the shape of a cross. The obvious reason, he figured, was so that God could see it from heaven, but he had another sort of surveillance in mind just then. They were coming for him, and soon. That, he was sure of.
It would be so much easier to just end it right here. To take a dive. To just spread my arms wide, close my eyes, and tip over gracefully, he thought, like one of those novelty-shop birds that endlessly nosedives for a drink of water. The bird, however, continued dipping. He wouldn’t be so fortunate. Not that he hadn’t considered it often throughout the endless days he’d spent locked up in Dr. Frey’s asylum, demoralized, disbelieved, watching from the “penthouse” windows as the scaffolding went up around Precious Blood. But even then, he knew he didn’t have the luxury of suicide, and with so much at stake, his own suffering hardly mattered. He’d accepted that when he’d accepted himself. He still had much to do. Much to tell them about who he is, who they are, and why they were there. And nothing and nobody was going to stop him. He felt he had little choice in the things that had happened, but he had at least that much. He had his spirit.
Sebastian watched for a long time, hoping for his mind to empty along with the streets. Freeze-framed memories as jagged as the glass at his feet replayed and sliced at his conscience, haunting him, driving him to his knees. He was so overcome, he could barely feel the fragments cutting holes in his jeans and grinding into his skin. Time had become so fluid. It might have been weeks ago or hours. He saw himself dragged into the psych ward, restrained, sedated, evaluated. Involuntarily. Like a frog specimen in biology class, poked, prodded, and about to be shocked in and out of consciousness. Erased.
He relived it every time he closed his eyes. An endless loop of misery. The cuffs, the