Excerpt
But the door opened before he reached it. Malachy Murphy stood there as unsure of himself or of Padraig as Stephen Carney had been.
“Yes, Malachy?” Padraig asked. He meant to address the boy with gentleness, but the voice that rang in his own ears was sterner than he intended.
Malachy’s face twitched. “The church is filling, Father, and Stephen hasn’t come back. I’ve come to see if I can help you get ready for the Mass.”
God spoke a terrible sentence in this timid voice.
Padraig trembled. He must suffer his Calvary. His Gethsemane, like Christ’s, had brought no reprieve. He had to carry the unbearable cross that crushed him.
“Yes, Malachy,” he said in a voice that scarcely rose above a whisper. “Yes, of course, my son. Come in.”
Malachy stepped cautiously into the room. The door closed with a crash that reverberated inside Padraig’s pulsing skull like the crack of doom. The Day of Judgement had come. Time passed without measure. Padraig moved without consciousness. He was aware only of the ordeal before him, more terrifying than Golgotha. His actions were mechanical but jerky. Each jerk of limb ground his squealing joints. Each twist of body wrenched his torn ligaments. His whole being screamed with excruciating pain.
“It’s time now, Father,” the same timid voice boomed out.
The door was open, and Padraig was moving out to stand before the treacherous crowd and its hidden assassins. The faces spun before him and then stopped. He looked in terror from one to another. He saw them separately, in hard outline, cold-chiseled out of grim granite: ugly, unfeeling, cruel faces. One by one they opened their cavernous mouths and shouted, “Crucify him! Crucify him! Crucify him!” Padraig’s stomach felt as if it were turning itself inside out, spilling his guts. He staggered forward. Michael. Flynn. Mother Ross. Nora. Caitlin. Caitlin. Caitlin. The white dress. The white flashes. Crucify him! Crucify him! Crucify him! The hot nail between his eyes. The white explosions of hammer blows. Then black nothingness.
The crowd in the church saw Padraig emerge from the shadows. They saw the terror in his face, the trembling in his limbs. Then his body stiffened and he crashed forward like a broken statue. Someone at the front of the church screamed, and hubbub filled the building.
Ahead of a swift press of bodies Michael and Flynn rushed to the side of the fallen priest. His face was white as a surplice. His breathing had stopped.
“Father Padraig’s dead.”
The horrified whisper rushed through the church like a rising wind.
Libros Libertad 