Only half of Frank’s suspicions about Lilith were correct. She was acting on orders, and Meg, who issued them, was hiding in the shadows. But the reason for her secrecy went much deeper than he could have imagined. In his world, sane people don’t have visions of the Crucifixion, and if their hands bleed where the nails were driven into Jesus’s hands, deception is being practiced.
Meg held the same beliefs ten years ago. When her palms suddenly oozed blood, she turned her back on the phenomenon. As soon as she got off the bus, she rushed inside and went to bed without turning on the lights. She didn’t want to see what was happening to her. She wanted no part of it.
But it was a mistake not to bandage her hands before she crawled under the covers. When Meg woke up the next morning, the sheets were lightly smeared red. The stains were bright and fresh. She must have been bleeding all night.
She became very frightened seeing the two round spots on her palms, sticky and shiny in the morning sun. She faced herself in the bedroom mirror and said, “I have the stigmata,” testing the word out. It sounded unreal.
After scrubbing the spots with soap, they disappeared, but within minutes the film of blood came back. And it was starting to drip again. She rummaged for a first-aid kit tucked at the back of the linen closet. Inside the kit was a roll of gauze bandages. Perching on the edge of the bathtub, she thoroughly wrapped up her hands. As far as anyone at the bank would know, she had carelessly burned herself taking a hot pan out of the oven.
The story was accepted without question. Meg’s assistant winced and offered sympathy; she was careful to insulate a hot cup of coffee in three paper napkins before handing it to her. Otherwise no one took notice of her bandages. A week passed. Meg hung fire, applying a new dressing every morning. She felt a dull pain that didn’t get better or worse.
Morbid curiosity sent her online, which was probably a mistake, because all she found were scary photos of people whose stigmata were worse than hers, much worse. Some had a row of ragged punctures across the forehead or a mark on the side of the body that looked like a gash, an open wound. Some stigmatics didn’t bleed, some did. Some had recurrences every year, usually at Easter. Meg quickly turned away.
Two weeks later, without warning, a voice in her head said, I will send you a blessing. A gentle, unmistakable voice spoke these words. It was a female voice, yet not hers. The exact moment was etched in Meg’s memory. She was alone in her office replacing a batch of documents in the filing cabinet. The sky outside was bright and clear. In the park across the street, work crews were stringing the bare trees with fairy lights for Christmas, and the frozen ground was feathered with snow like eiderdown.
After a short pause, the message in her head was repeated: I will send you a blessing.
Meg closed her eyes, willing the voice to explain what it meant. It didn’t. So she went back to work, pretending that everything was normal. She moved cautiously, like a tightrope walker without a net. The worst thing would be to tip over.
If there was going to be a blessing, it didn’t come that day. When evening fell, Meg started to wonder if she needed to do penance. She fumbled with the fingertips of bandaged hands and pulled out her rosary, tucked in the bottom drawer of her bureau.
How desperate am I? she thought. Maybe she would be praying to the God that sent this affliction in the first place. It was a disturbing possibility. She’d never had a reason to doubt her faith or even examine it. When she was just a speck in her mother’s womb, her genes were already marked at the factory: female, green eyes, light brown hair, Irish Catholic. She was made this way before birth. God was a given. God was taken care of.
Reflecting on this, Meg felt a burst of anger. Who was God to force her hand? Who said he could point a cosmic finger and say, “You. You’re it.” Nobody had the right to play God. Which posed a problem, because no matter how hard she wrestled with it, God had a right to play God. He had just waited a long time before deciding to. She put the rosary back in the drawer, defeated.
Then one day a woman passed a sheaf of papers across her desk. A car loan application. Meg stared at it dully and picked up a pen.
“Your first name is Lilith?” she asked. “I don’t see a last name.”
“You won’t need it.”
Meg looked up, eying the customer, a tall woman in her late forties, perhaps fifty, with touches of gray at the temples.
“A last name is mandatory,” Meg said, wondering why this was even an issue.
“Not this time. I like my old car. I don’t need a new one.” The woman had a decisive way of speaking that kept Meg from interrupting. “This is all about you—and that.” The woman pointed to Meg’s bandaged hands. “You’ve received a blessing.”
Meg drew her hands out of sight under the desk.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I burned myself in the kitchen.”
Lilith smiled. “Just unwrap them. You’ll see.”
Meg glanced down. A minute ago the gauze was beginning to show a slight discoloration from the seeping blood, but now it was snow-white.
“The blessing has been sent,” said Lilith. “Don’t be frightened. You’re not crazy. Go ahead.”
Meg looked around the office. A line of customers snaked toward the tellers, and her coworker was sitting with another loan applicant at the desk next to hers.
“Here?” she asked, mortified.
Lilith shrugged. “What do you have to lose? It’s not like you’re having a good day.”
Gingerly Meg unwrapped her right hand. There was no stiffness from dried blood on the gauze. The bandage came off as smooth as a ribbon, and underneath her palm was unblemished. Rapidly she undid the other hand, and it was the same.
“What does this mean?” she stammered.
“It means you have a road to travel. Everyone does, but yours is different. You will walk a blessed path.”
Without knowing why, Meg felt tears filling her eyes, blurring her view of her visitor.
“The soul is usually silent,” Lilith continued. “It watches and waits. But your soul has called you out.” She had showed little expression as she said this, but now she smiled wryly. “The good news is, you’ve been chosen. The bad news is, you’ve been chosen.”
“I’ve heard better jokes,” Meg mumbled. She wiped her eyes, and her strange visitor came back into focus. “Please excuse me. This is pretty overwhelming.”
“That’s what I’m here for. To make it easier. No one is ever prepared. But we mustn’t let our emotions run away with us, must we?”
Meg started to laugh. Lilith seemed like a tart headmistress, right down to the tight bun she wore her hair in and the vaguely British accent. It was faintly outlandish, but effective. Meg’s attention was totally focused; her panic was held in check. Fear was a great ocean wave ready to crash over her if Lilith wasn’t holding it back.
Meg’s laughter must have had a tinge of hysteria in it, because Lilith reached for her hand across the desk. “Do you need some water? Perhaps you should lie down.”
“I’ll be all right,” Meg said, not at all certain. “I’ve got employees to look after.”
She glanced out the window at the bright winter sky. A wave of calmness came over her, the first she’d felt in weeks. It was like a benediction.
“I’ll be all right,” she repeated.
Lilith watched her closely; she seemed satisfied.
“Then I’ll take my leave.” She stood up wearing an ambiguous smile, halfway between amused and knowing. She took back the car loan application, folded it neatly, and stuck it into her purse.
“Will I see you again?” Meg asked, feeling anxiety begin to creep back in.
“I’ll be at your door when you get home tonight. We’ve made a beginning. Good.”
“How do you know where I live?” asked Meg.
“How do I know anything?” Lilith replied. “It just comes to me.”
After she departed, Meg played at finishing the work day normally. The tightrope walker didn’t tip over. She balled up the gauze bandages and threw them into the waste bin in the ladies’ room. Her reflection in the mirror was trying hard not to look elated.
She drove home at five, and every block deepened her sense of wonder. Do things like this really happen? Meg had read the New Testament when she was sixteen, to please a boyfriend, a Protestant who was going through some kind of phase. The boyfriend dropped away, and Meg thought the Bible had too. Except that now, driving home, an obscure verse came back to her: “I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.” A saint said it, and if Meg wasn’t a saint, what was she?
Lilith was waiting on the stoop when she pulled into the driveway. She wore a thick tweed coat against the cold and held her handbag in front of her with both hands, as stiff as a palace guard on watch. Meg approached to unlock the front door. Neither spoke.
Once inside, Meg waited for Lilith’s next move. The nearest room was the dining room. Lilith went in and seated herself at the head of the table. She patted the chair closest to her, which Meg obediently took.
“Have you reflected on what I told you?”
“I’m not sure. I can’t remember anything except relief.”
“Understandable.”
Suddenly Meg wondered if the voice that had spoken in her head belonged to Lilith. “If I have you to thank . . .” she started to say.
“No. I’m not in such a position,” Lilith said, waving off her gratitude. “I’m not a healer. But some people are. Maybe you, one day. In this instance, the soul spoke through your body. The flesh was willing, but the spirit was weak. I’m rather addicted to aphorisms, forgive me. I’ll just keep talking until you’re not dazed anymore.”
Meg felt like she was breathing air from another world, but her mind had begun to clear already.
“Do you believe your experience was real?” Lilith asked.
“I have to, don’t I?” Meg glanced at her hands, checking one more time to make sure they looked unblemished.
“You don’t have to accept anything, actually. I didn’t, not at first.” Lilith paused. “You’re going to meet some people. They’ll also struggle with being chosen.”
“When will I meet them?”
“That I don’t know. I do know how many—seven, counting you and me.”
Meg felt uneasy. She’d assumed all along, ever since the first morning of her ordeal, that she would face it alone.
“What if they don’t want to meet me?”
“I won’t let that happen.”
Lilith was a cross between an oracle and a drill sergeant, but Meg wasn’t afraid to stand up to her. “Who says it’s your choice?”
“It has nothing to do with me. Reality is covered by a veil of mystery. You’ve penetrated the veil. It’s a rare experience, and these seven people will have it, once you show them the way.”
Meg was incredulous. “Me? I can’t show anybody anything.”
“That’s going to change. When the whole group assembles, the person holding it together will be you.”
Lilith saw the doubt lingering in Meg’s eyes. She became more insistent. “You don’t understand. I’m one of the seven. I need you, more than you can possibly know.”
But the blessing Lilith had brought was already fading. Fear warned Meg to retreat into her shell.
Lilith read her mind. “The craving to be normal is powerful. It permits a moment of wonder, and then it drags us back, like an undertow we can’t resist.”
Meg gave an ironic smile. “As if normal is so great.”
“Exactly. When all seven of us are gathered, a flame will spring up. If one member refuses to join, there will only be ashes.”
Meg had a troubled cousin, Fran, who went to support groups for her addictions. They probably talked this way at the meetings. But she realized that she had to rethink who Lilith was—not a headmistress, more like a guide leading climbers up a treacherous peak. Stay on the path. Don’t stray. We’re all in this together.
Lilith veered abruptly in a new direction. “Do you think you can see to infinity?”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“Then I’ll tell you. Right now, your mind is fenced inside a walled courtyard, which keeps you safely enclosed. Anything that lies beyond the wall is frightening, including miracles.”
“And you’re saying I’ve had a miracle.”
“Yes, and it scares you to death.”
“Maybe that’s a reason not to run after any more of them,” Meg said.
“The chosen don’t run after miracles. It’s the other way around. The miracle found you. That’s another thing that scares you.”
Lilith was used to controlling the conversation. That much was clear to Meg. But was Lilith also trying to control her? If I’m one of the chosen, what are we chosen for? Meg wondered.
A string of visits followed. Lilith’s appearances were punctual, right at ten after five when Meg came up the driveway from work. She always stood at attention with both hands clutching her purse, waiting for the front door to be opened. There was never anyone else with her, and the group of seven, whoever they were, wasn’t mentioned again.
One day Meg had sunk into a dark depression. She was waking up every morning feeling exhausted. Nothing in her life was stable anymore. The bank was the worst. She felt like she was doing a bad impersonation of her old self, and every day it was getting harder to keep up the act.
Lilith tried to reassure her. “The beginning is always the worst. You’re totally protected, but you can’t see it yet. ”
After a while their visits were silent for long stretches. Twilight felt gray and empty. Meg got sick of being encouraged. Her hands had healed completely. She would have tried harder to go back to her former life, but this was impossible. She kept remembering her own words: “What’s so great about normal?”
One afternoon the house was desolately quiet, an echo chamber for the ticking clocks and rumbling refrigerator compressor.
Out of the blue Lilith said, “You resent me, don’t you?”
Meg gave a silent shrug, unwilling to deny it.
“I’m just the messenger, you know,” Lilith added.
There was no reply.
“Then what is it?”
Meg wanted to get up and walk away, but then she surprised herself by letting loose a wail of rage and self-pity. “I’m the one who had to suffer. I was bleeding! You don’t know what it’s like for me. You have it easy. You call yourself a messenger. Look around. You delivered a curse.”
Like a dying siren, her anger trailed off into a whine. “Sorry,” she mumbled.
“Don’t apologize. Maybe you’re right. But not about me.”
Meg heaved a sigh. “I don’t know anything about you.”
“Maybe it’s time you did.”
The living room where they sat was being overtaken by the falling night, but Meg didn’t reach for the lamp. She sat back, wondering what Lilith’s story could possibly be.
When she was twenty, Lilith woke up from a bad dream, sweating and distraught. She was back from college on summer vacation. It was a time she loved, and besides, she almost never had bad dreams, nothing like this one, which was like being trapped in a hallucination.
She had landed far back in time, centuries and centuries ago. She was standing in front of a thick wooden door, the kind one might find in a medieval village. The door was nailed shut with rough oak boards. She realized that she wasn’t alone. Several men, their faces tense and hard, stood around while two other men pried the boards loose.
The onlookers exchanged worried glances. When the last nail was pulled out, the boards clattered to the cobblestone pavement.
“What’s wrong?” Lilith remembered asking in her dream. But the instant she asked, she knew the answer. Plague. She could smell death, a sickly rotten stench that became stronger when one of the men pushed open the door. Inside was darkness, because all the windows had been sealed too. The Black Death was merciless and swift. A boat carrying the plague might land in port, and within a week a quarter of the population in the town would be corpses littering the street.
The men looked at one another, hesitant about who should go inside to look. All eyes drifted to her. What? Lilith thought of herself as an unseen presence, but to them she was part of the scene. You look. You are the one, the men were speaking Italian, but Lilith understood every word. Around her, the crowd kept repeating the word morte excitedly.
With her first step through the door, she was repelled—the stench pushed her back like a hand over her face. The darkness wasn’t absolute. Glimmers of sunlight came in through the boarded-up windows, and after a moment she saw something gleaming and gold.
Her eyes adjusted. The gleam took shape; she could see a small object sitting on the floor. At first it didn’t register that the shape was a church or chapel, because her attention was frozen on the bodies. Six corpses lay around the object. They were arranged in a symmetrical pattern, extending outward like spokes of a wheel with the gold object as the hub.
The accursed sight caused the group of men—a search party looking for survivors—to disperse, screaming Dio ci protegga! Dio ci protegga! God protect us! God protect us! Below their confused shouting, Lilith could hear the sharp clatter of shoes scurrying over the cobblestones.
Her heart was beating fast. Whoever she was in the dream, the town’s fear and dread had seized her completely. But she couldn’t help staring at the wheel of bodies, wondering who had arranged them in a sealed and boarded house. Maybe no one. The logical answer was that they had lain down to die, deliberately forming the pattern. Knowing they were doomed, they wanted to send a message.
“And then I woke up,” Lilith said when she got to this point in her story.
“Before you understood the message?” Meg asked.
“No. It was just a dream. I wasn’t curious about it. I got out of bed, threw open the windows to cool off the room, and went for my morning swim. Our family always rented the same cabin by the lake every summer.”
“And nothing happened?”
Lilith gave the first warm smile of their time together. “Everything happened. The golden shrine—that’s the proper term—had found me. It always finds the chosen, one way or another.
“I came home from a date that night, a little woozy on wine. This boy and I had been teasing each other all evening, but he didn’t get past second base. I remember wishing he had, when suddenly the same gleam I saw in my dream was in my bedroom. My hand had found the light switch, but I hadn’t turned it on. But I instantly knew where the gleam came from.”
“And it frightened you,” Meg said.
“Just like you. I was frozen in place, and suddenly my mind was flooded with the truth. My dream was actually a prophecy. I had stumbled onto a mystery school. That’s who the dead bodies belong to, a kind of secret society.”
“I don’t understand,” said Meg.
“You will. The society is still around, and we’re part of it, along with the others, once they answer the call.”
“A mystery school,” Meg said to herself, testing out the words. “Why?”
“Because mysteries need to be revealed, and at the same time they need protecting.”
Meg was bewildered, but excited and intrigued too. “You saw six bodies in your dream. Why are there seven of us?”
“Because the seventh member of our mystery school is the teacher, and she is inside the shrine. She chooses us, and through her we come together, six complete strangers who share a path.”
“Unless we die together. That was in your dream. Is it part of the prophecy?”
“I worried about that, until I realized that you can’t be literal about these things,” Lilith replied. “I think we will die unto death. Remember those words. You’ll hear them in the convent when you get there.”
Convent? Meg was speechless. If the McGeary family tree contained any nuns, she had never heard of it. A feeling of unreality returned, the same way Meg had felt when she was staring at her bleeding palms.
Lilith shook her head. “I know. This feels like someone else’s life.”
Meg nodded. It was good that Lilith understood, but it wasn’t enough. The walls of the room began to close in, smothering her. Lilith had told her she was on a blessed path. Wherever that path was leading, Meg didn’t care. She only wanted a way out.