Free The Wrath of Jeremy by Stephen Andrew Salamon Page A

Gabriel’s helpless
figure, triggering the young man to pay close attention to the
figure, with fear in his mind.
    “Thou don’t need my help yet, the help is
already with you,” the Jesus on the cross echoed, with his voice
traveling through the small room and hovering over Gabriel’s head.
“I shall help when it is suitable for you to be helped!”
    Stunned speechless, Gabriel did not
understand that he was hearing his God’s voice, which allowed more
tears to fall from his eyes. “Why can I hear you? What is happening
to me?” Gabriel’s sight was filled with terror and truth, seeing
that Jesus showed a tear that fell from his own right eye. At the
same time, a tear fell from Gabriel’s right eye, too.
    “Gabriel, you are the East, you must guide My
army to the east,” echoed Jesus, with his own tears falling to the
green-tiled floor and turning each tile white. It was magical and
mystical to Gabriel’s blurry vision; he didn’t want to close his
eyes. Wanting to see this vision as long as it would last, Gabriel
fought his lids from closing, yearning to remember the moment when
his Lord spoke to him, a moment of his Lord crying.
    “I don’t understand!”
    Once the last word came from Gabriel’s cut-up
mouth, the straps on his ankles and wrists began to bust loose,
allowing him to wipe the tears away from his eyes to control the
stinging it caused in them, as well as the cuts on his lips and
nose that cried out for the salty tears not to touch them.
    “Find the Shroud, that’s where the map shall
lie, and find Veronica’s Kerchief, the other map is within it!”
After the words came from the mouth of Jesus once more, the door to
the small, heat-filled room opened, and in came the obese man who
called himself a nurse. He noticed the straps had been broken from
Gabriel’s wrists and ankles. His green eyes turned to the cross on
the wall and he ran over to it in rage.
    Grabbing the cross with one grasp of its
wooden body, he said toward Gabriel’s shadow, as it appeared on the
wall from the light outside the window, “So, Gabriel, you think
this will help you escape from here? I don’t think so.”
    The man ran over to him and strapped the
straps to his ankles and wrists again, tightening them more stiffly
than they were, giving his blood only enough room to flow one drop
at a time to them. The large man then took the cross out of the
room and shouted before exiting it, “You’re not going to destroy
me—I won’t allow you to!”

CHAPTER FIVE
     
    J eremy slowly
followed behind Mary, and as they approached the mental institution
he felt a nervous ache shooting up his throat. The torment of
staring at Grewsal’s ugly façade made a recipe of torture in his
mind. He gawked at Grewsal, seeing the statues of gargoyles
guarding their places of rock, directing their devilish eyes toward
his, and in a way waiting for him to enter—at least that was his
impression. Coming up to its staircase, Jeremy dropped his left
foot on the first step, when suddenly a penetrating bolt of
lightning shot through the sky, causing him to almost lose his
balance, but catching his fall by grabbing onto one of the
gargoyles on the right. Jeremy turned around to look at the flash,
not realizing as he took his hand away from the gargoyle that its
eyes blinked, sort of as if he woke it up by accident. Yet when he
turned and glanced back, his nervous perception of the beast of
stone proved false, its eyes were still rock-hard as they were.
    Mary turned to Jeremy and giggled. “It looks
like a storm’s coming. Man, I hate September weather.”
    Jeremy grinned at her remark and slowly
proceeded to walk up the stairs. When his right foot touched the
second step, another bolt of lightning shot through the sky that
caused Jeremy to fall from fright. He got up quickly. Mary had her
back to him and did not know that he fell; Jeremy was relieved that
she didn’t see his clumsiness. Every step that he touched sent more
bolts