Father Coleman is saying the Lord’s Prayer before bed when he starts coughing up blood.
The blood splatters across his bedsheets, scarlet against the white, and for the first time in his sixty-four years, he believes God is calling to him.
Pressing a hand to his lips to staunch the flow, Father Coleman gets to his knees and runs to the bathroom. He spits fresh blood into the sink and watches it slip down the drain. Thoughts race through his head and he studies himself in the mirror, sees the fear in his deep-set eyes. One thought, above all others, passes from his lips.
“Am I dying?”
A knock on the front door draws his gaze. Who on earth is knocking on my door in the middle of the night? He considers the blood, turns on the tap to rinse it away, and wipes his mouth on the back of his hand.
Am I dying?
Who’s at the door?
The priest stands still, focuses on his breathing and pounding heart. The knock comes again. He checks his watch, and notices his hand is trembling. It’s almost 1am. He has to hold mass in the morning.
Why am I coughing up blood?
The knock comes a third time. Father Coleman leaves the bathroom and steps into the hallway. Slowly, he shuffles along the carpet into the living room. Through the curtains, he glimpses two silhouettes standing at his front door. One of them reaches up to rap on the door.
Knock-knock-knock
Whoever they are, they are persistent. Patient.
“Who’s there?” Father Coleman says, stifling a new cough.
The silhouettes turn in the direction of his voice.
“Servants of the Lord,” one of them says.
The priest steps closer, leaning on his favorite recliner.
Jehovah’s Witness—at this hour?
“Please,” he says. “It’s late—”
“Matthew Chapter 24, Verse 44: Therefore, you must also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect… Padre.”
The priest frowns and crosses to open the door. “How did you know I was a priest—”
The sight of the two men leaves Father Coleman speechless. One is horribly scarred, his face, neck and arms reddened and undulated with healed-over burns. The other, a tall, frail man glares back at him with sightless eyes the color of curdled milk. Despite their appearance, they each wear white shirts with black neckties and matching trousers.
“Your very door declares it so,” the burned one says, indicating the crucifix nailed to the door frame.
Father Coleman forces a smile and a nod. “Yes, of course. Given that, do you think a Catholic priest truly requires a visit from the Jehovah’s Witness?”
The burned one smiles back, revealing ridges in his lips. “The Lord always comes to his children in their hour of need.”
The priest again nods in acknowledgement. “Indeed. Gentlemen, please don’t take this the wrong way, but I am not feeling well and I have to hold mass in the morning. I do admire your dedication, but perhaps your mission would be better serving someone else who truly needs it?”
The burned Mormon holds his smile, while his partner continues to stand, unblinking.
“Are you troubled, Padre?”
“I beg your pardon?”
The burned one gestures to his blind companion. “Zachariah and I can sense that you are troubled—that you are holding some doubt in your heart. Not unlike the apostle Thomas, no?”
Coleman sighs and begins to close his door. “Forgive me, but as I said, I am unwell, not troubled. Goodnight, gentlemen.”
The Mormon’s voice trails in as the door closes. “Goodnight, Padre, may the Lord bless you and keep you.”
He watches them leave down the street. Surely they won’t bother anyone else in the middle of the night? He locks the door, walks to the bathroom to rinse out his mouth, prays that the blood is an anomaly, changes his sheets, and suddenly weary, falls asleep.
Glass shatters, rousing Father Coleman from his slumber.
He sits up in bed, listening intently to the dark. He knows he heard the sound of something breaking. Through the echoes of the wind and the steady trill of the cicadas, his ears focus on the tinkling of glass.
He pulls the blankets closer, the beat of his heart and the taste of blood throbbing in the back of his throat. Again, the fear comes, even sharper than before.
Am I going to die?
The cicadas cease their song and the silence takes hold. Coleman considers calling out, and estimates the distance between his bedroom and the phone in the living room. The glass. The glass will be everywhere. All over the floor. He’ll cut his feet. There’ll be so much blood.
This is my blood.
He peers at the rectangle of darkness that separates his bedroom from the hall. It’s like a freshly dug grave.
“Who’s there?” he says to the grave.
The blind Mormon bleeds out of the black, a ghost from the void. Despite his frailty and blindness, Zachariah seems to know exactly where Father Coleman is.
The priest screams and tastes his blood all over again.
Father Coleman awakes to a cacophony of sobbing and fear. He blinks against the dim light, silhouettes of people emerging through the fog in his head. The faces of the people seated around him sharpen with each breath and he sees that each of them is just as terror-stricken as he is. He tries to stand, but quickly realizes he is bound to his chair, the others too. There are four others: a woman, possibly in her early thirties, and three men of varying ages. One of the men bears a bloody gash above his eye. All of them struggle against their bonds. The priest, discomforted by their desperate appearances, looks away to the walls.
Where am I?
Who are these people?
The walls, grimy and flecked with dirt, are adorned floor to ceiling with bands of red and white. The more Coleman examines the walls, the more he believes them to be moving, shifting as if in a gentle breeze. Head swimming, he cranes his neck to look upwards to discover the ceiling reaches a pointed apex above them.
“It’s a tent,” Coleman whispers. “I’m in a tent.”
“Please…”
He turns to the woman’s voice. Her mascara runs like black snakes down her cheeks.
“Mister, please…can you help me get loose?”
Coleman pulls against the ropes, his skin stinging in resistance. “How did I get here?” he replies. “How did you?”
One of the men—the one with the gash over his eye—speaks up, the timbre of his voice wavering.
“Shut the fuck up! They’ll hear. They’ll come back.”
A rising bellow of music startles them—the warbling thunder of a pipe organ. The interior of the tent swells with impossible light from an invisible source and it is then that Coleman understands just how spacious the tent is. He and the others are seated around a stage and towering above it is the gargantuan pipe organ.
“Oh, God! Oh, Jesus!” the bleeding man cries.
The organ music soars inside Coleman’s ears, a rising throng that none of them can block. It flows around them and through them, and yet the shadows keep the organist a mystery. The priest just wants the song to stop and as if by his command, it does.
Two figures enter the stage like they are made of the air itself. Zachariah and his burned companion. Sweat runs down Coleman’s back as they approach, clutching black, leatherbound books. The priest’s fellow hostages begin to keen and moan in despair.
“Please…” the woman says. “Don’t hurt me.”
The burned Mormon—if he truly is a Christian at all—holds out his hands to try to soothe his captive audience.
“Oh, Miss Chisholm, we’re not going to hurt you—we’re going to enlighten you.” He turns to Father Coleman. “We have a newcomer to our flock—an actual man of the cloth.”
Coleman swallows down his fear. “Why have you brought me here? You need to let me go.” He looks to the others. “You need to let us all go.”
He ignores the priest. “Father Coleman here believes he knows God. He’s been the dutiful servant, holding mass, celebrating feast days, fasting during Lent, breaking the bread, and blessing the communion wine. For years, he has believed that God was speaking to him—through him. But he is wrong.”
He moves from the priest to Miss Chisholm, who recoils in her chair. “Sally Chisholm once walked God’s path, but in her weakness, she strayed, choosing illicit substances and fornication. She refused to hear God’s word, she used her mouth to please men instead of speaking the Lord’s gospel, and her eyes?” He reaches out to touch her cheek, but she wrenches her face away. “…Through her eyes, she saw only sin.”
Zachariah descends the stairs and places a book in each of the hostage’s laps. Still, he walks and moves as if he can see. Coleman looks down and sees the book is a collection of hymns. The burned man continues.
“I, Jacob, have brought you here to summon you to His fold. To show you that God has returned to this world to bring forth his judgement as the one true redeemer.”
The pipe organ starts anew, filling the air with its melancholy. Zachariah opens the hymnals for each of them, but Coleman realizes the pages are blank. Jacob and Zachariah begin to sing.
“The blood of the Lamb
Is a river to cleanse the sinner…”
The organ reaches a crescendo of sound and Coleman’s ears—all of their ears—ring in pain. Sally Chisholm screams, her hearing seemingly the worst affected. Coleman watches in horror as blood oozes from her ear canals, dripping down the sides of her face. Still the organ plays its vile tune and still Jacob and Zachariah sing.
“Our Lord, our Lamb has come
To save the righteous.
His blood, our blood,
Is water for the soul.”
More parishioners appear on the stage from the dark, clothed in matching white and black. Each of them carries some nature of deformity: a missing arm or leg, burns and cuts. Others have their mouths and eyes stitched closed. They begin to sway in time with the music, joining in the chorus. Sally Chisholm writhes in agony beside the priest.
“The blood of the Lamb
Is a river to cleanse
The sinner.
We feel his love through
Silence, patience, and grace.
His blood, our blood,
Is water for the soul.”
The man with the gash above his eye pries his hands free and tries to run, but Zachariah grabs him by his hair and forces him to the ground. The organ ceases its song and the gathered flock moves down to circle the melee.
“Get the fuck off me!” the man says, trying to escape the blind man’s grip.
“Silence him, Zachariah,” Jacob says, “Silence him so he can hear His word.”
One of them produces a hooked needle, another a thread of catgut. Each is handed to Zachariah. The gashed man struggles, but the flock holds his limbs tight. Those same greedy fingers keep his head pinned down as the needle pierces his upper lip. The man’s screams echo off the revival tent walls and the organ restarts in celebration. Coleman grimaces as Zachariah meticulously weaves the hook and thread through the man’s lips, sealing them closed.
“His blood, our blood
Is water for the soul.”
Sally stops screaming. “I…I can hear him,” she says.
Coleman and the other victims turn to her, watching as her expression shifts from confusion to elation.
“I can hear him!”
Jacob goes to her, joyous. “Of course you can! You only needed to listen. We all only need to listen.”
The second man pisses his pants, the sound of the torrent drawing their gazes. Jacob tuts in disappointment.
“Gerry here is a slave to his fear. Help him see that there is nothing to fear.”
The group moves without hesitation. Coleman sits unblinking as they draw back the man’s head, while two others go at his eyes with pocket knives. After the screams fade, they present Jacob with two red orbs. For a moment, he holds them in his palm like they are jewels, only to drop them to the floor and squash them beneath his heel.
“Now Gerry will see His wonders.”
Father Coleman straightens is his chair, trying to remain steadfast against the ensuing madness.
“What you are doing is not God’s work,” the priest says to Jacob.
The others look to the priest, their work leaving Gerry with two red caverns in his skull, but subdued and reverent.
“These sinners have seen the light, Father,” Jacob says. “Gerry has seen it…” He then points to the other man with the sewn lips. “Brian there has heard it, as has Sally. The only one left to understand the truth is you.”
Coleman coughs. “Do you think this is what God meant when He wanted you to spread His word? Blinding and maiming people?”
Jacob shrugs. “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”
Coleman scoffs, but it starts a coughing fit. He spits bloody phlegm on the floor. Jacob observes the blood puddle and then steps closer to the old priest.
“Death is what you fear, isn’t it, Padre?”
“No, because I believe in the resurrection.”
The leader smiles. “You don’t need to be resurrected, Father. God gave us these bodies—this flesh—to be His temple, His church here on Earth. He never wanted us to build places of stone and wood to worship Him in. Our blood is His soul.
The group recites Jacob’s words in turn.
“Our blood is His soul. His soul is our blood.”
Gerry, blood oozing from his eye sockets, joins them. “His soul is in our blood.”
Sally is untied and she walks over to join the flock. “His soul is in our blood,” she says.
Jacob dips a finger in Father Coleman’s blood and shows it to him. “His blood is in your blood too, Padre.”
“No,” the priest says.
“You proclaim it to be His blood at communion. Why is it so hard for you to believe it resides in each of us?”
Coleman looks into Jacob’s eyes and each of the others in turn. They are afflicted with a shared madness. Then the leader takes the priest’s hands in his.
“Oh, Padre, everything is a shared madness.”
“What? How did you—
Jacob stands and summons the flock to his side. “Shall we show him?”
They converge on him, scooping him up, chair and all, to carry him to the stage.
“No, please—don’t!” the priest says.
“But Padre, you said it yourself—you don’t fear death because of the resurrection!”
He is carried across the stage, the organ stirring them all in their procession. At the end of the stage, a glowing crack of light begins to appear. A thin line of golden light. The doors to the tent are parting.
“He is already resurrected, Father,” Jacob says. “He came to me as a boy on my parents’ farm. They wanted to destroy Him. They saw Him as an aberration, but I knew what He was. He was a gift, like the Son he sent to us two thousand years ago.”
The tent doors part wide and beyond them Father Coleman beholds a lamb seated atop a field of lush grass. The lamb is eyeless, its mouth sealed over with skin, unformed. Seven legs, instead of four. Its wool gleams with ethereal light and the priest can hear its voice—its soul—in his head.
The priest feels the warmth of its light and for the second time in his life, he understands that God is calling him.