The needles on the spectrometer were moving wildly from left to right as if they were possessed. The table, chairs, bed, plates and glasses were all shaking. The air became denser, causing the dust particles to float slower, almost as if they were submerged in a water tank.
"Are you all right?" Anna asked.
Father Matthias didn't answer, but his facial features betrayed that he was suffering greatly. The skin on the back of the cadaver, reddened by an intense heat, formed tiny lumps that appeared, moved a few centimeters and then disappeared. An invisible force attempted to dislodge the crystal globe as if an invisible hand was pressing upwards against it, insistently shaking it from left to right to push it away from the body.
"I see it now," said Ana. "It's the loveliest one I've seen so far."
She was viewing an aurora of interlaced colors dancing before her eyes through the prism she held up to her face.
"My hands hurt, I don't think I'm going to be able to hold on," Father Matthias warned.
"Hang in there a little longer."
The colors emerged from the lifeless back of Carlos. They floated inside the globe, curving and bending around one another and spinning new strands as they came in contact with the circular surface of the glass. But the more colors were added, the harder it became for Father Matthias to stay on his feet.
"I can't hold out any more," he cried.
"Come on, you can do it, just a little bit longer," Ana encouraged him.
Finally, the aurora of colors faded into a blurry line of translucent smoke that appeared to move like the fins of a fish.
"It's gone," said Ana and hurried over to hold down the crystal globe.
An exhausted Father Matthias slumped to the floor and briefly closed his eyes to counter the pain coursing through his body.
"Now we can fix Carlos' body," he said in a trembling voice.
*
At that moment... in Amsterdam...
"The morgue has reported the disappearance of a cadaver," related the man in the dark glasses into his phone.
"Is it our man?" asked the weary voice.
"Yes.
“Well, don't waste any more time. Get out there and find it," he shouted, tired and absolutely certain that that damn priest was behind everything.
"Don't worry. We'll find it."
"I want you to call Thomas."
"You know that it's a personal thing for him and he'll stop at nothing."
"That's precisely why I want you to call him."
"As you wish," the man in the dark glasses agreed and hung up.
*
Ana applied a few thick poultices to the more severely damaged parts of Carlos' body. Father Matthias marked the areas that should treated with a felt-tip pen, and indicated to Ana what mixture should be applied there. Meanwhile, there didn’t appear to be anything inside the crystal globe, now sitting on top of the bed off in one corner, even though anyone who came close enough would be able to feel the heat it was giving off.
The two worked silently, not counting and apparently oblivious to the passing hours. Once they finished marking and treating the body, they wrapped it up in transparent kitchen wrap until it wound up looking like a plastic mummy.
"What the hell is that?" asked the shocked library director who had come downstairs to visit the priest.
Neither one knew what to say.
"When I heard on the news that a corpse had been stolen from the morgue, I would never have imagined I would find it in the basement of my library."
"It's not what it looks like, Mark," said Father Matthias.
"Oh, of course. I knew that having you here would bring me problems sooner or later. And truthfully, I always imagined it would be over something as absurd and outrageous as what I'm seeing now. When you first came here and asked me if I would help you, I didn't ask you for any explanation because I knew you were a good person. But I also warned you that the moment your past caught up with you, I would be forced to throw you out."
"That's true. You have always been very kind and discreet."
"I'm also a person with principles I hold dear. You know very well I have to report you to the police."
"I know. I understand."
The library director clenched his teeth, stroked his white beard, took off his tie and sat down on the stairs.
"The two of you have two hours before I alert the police."
"Thanks a lot, Mark. I can assure you you're doing the right thing."
"I certainly hope so," he said and stood up.
He climbed up a couple of stairs and then stopped dead in his tracks. He noticed that he had goosebumps and something was making the hair on his arms stand on end as if a magnet was attracting them.
"What's going on here?" he muttered.
He tilted his head to one side, drawn by the crystal globe. He went back down the stairs, walked over to the bed and stretched his hand out to touch it. The feeling of gentleness that enveloped him penetrated throughout his entire body, soothing him completely, as if he had regressed back to his childhood days and was being hugged by his parents.
Without ever touching the globe, he turned around and approached the table.
"You two are playing with fire," he whispered without looking them directly in the eye and went back up the stairs.
Ana stared at Father Matthias without blinking and told him:
"Maybe he's right, maybe we haven't thought this whole thing through well enough."
"Of course, he's right, but if we want to reach our goal, we have no choice but to continue. Our purpose transcends all understanding and it goes without saying that it is more than important we are ourselves."
They gathered up all the essential things they needed, put the body back in the trunk, loaded up the tools and other utensils wherever they could and went away from the library in search of a safe place to continue their work.
*
Two hours later...
"I would like to report an incident," Mark said to the police sergeant who answered the phone. "I saw someone was trying to hide the stolen cadaver in my library."
The sergeant dispatched four agents right away to confirm if the information was true. But he also made a second telephone call:
"A library in the suburbs of Amsterdam just called saying they saw what you're looking for."
"Thanks," was all the man in the dark glasses said before hanging up.