Oby slowly emerged from her sleep to see a gentleman sitting by the window, gazing at her silently. His profile was silhouetted against a shaft of ashen light that poured into her hospital room from the outside. But for some odd reason, Oby felt that the man was smiling at her shrewdly.
Before she could say anything, he rose to his feet, and slowly advanced towards her. His gait and stride were those of noblemen.
“I can help you beat this,” whispered the gentleman, standing a couple of feet from her. Oby met his gaze in that dim grayish light. He was immaculately dressed in a dark brown suit. His sharp features lent him a somewhat otherworldly appearance that was utterly pleasing to the eye. But his skin was very pale, almost transparent, with a web of black veins stretched out like poisoned roots across his face, down his neck and hands.
“I can help you beat this,” repeated the gentleman, now hovering over her. Oby didn’t remember seeing him move from where he was standing before. His breath strangely stank of freshly turned earth mixed with ashes.
“Who…who are you?” Oby asked, lifting herself up with some difficulty.
“That doesn’t matter. What’s most important is to get you on your feet,” said the gentleman, smiling amiably.
“But…”
“Shhh. Easy now, dear child. I know all your desires. Even your darkest ones. The biggest one right now is for you to get up from that accursed bed, and I can help you with that.”
The gentleman felt in his vest pocket and produced a small glass phial containing a red liquid. Holding it between his thumb and his index finger, he brought it close to Oby’s face.
“This is the Holy Blood, and a small sip from it would resurrect you even from the dead.”
He went on relating to her its origin, dating back to the 1st century.
“It was underhandedly collected by Joseph of Arimathea following Christ’s Crucifixion. For many years, Joseph had kept it a secret, in his personal vault, until he revealed its existence on his deathbed, hoping that it would spare his life. When he sent it to be extracted from the vault, it was found missing. And since then, it’s been the most sought-after relic.”
Oby’s eyes widened. She had heard that Joseph of Arimathea was tasked with wiping the blood from the body of Christ after He was crucified, using a cloth that is now famously kept in a vial at the Basilica of the Holy Blood in the medieval town of Bruges, Belgium.
Oby allowed her desire to live poison her soul. She could feel it coursing through her whole being. Indeed, as the gentleman had stated, at that moment she wanted nothing more than to continue living. She had a plethora of wishes to fulfil in this world; wishes that now seemed inconceivable more than ever, for osteosarcoma, a type of deadly bone cancer that affects the limbs, shoulders and other locations, had reduced her into an utter invalid. She had been battling the disease ever since she was a child.
Yet she had never lost hope that one day she would recover from her gradual demise, and live a healthy life. That’s what she prayed for every day. Growing up in Cape St. Francis, a rustic fishing village in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, she had never been anywhere else to see the world – her biggest wish after regaining health.
Now the blood in that glass phial held by the gentleman could make all that possible.
Before Oby could accept anything, a furtive tapping sound of a cane hitting the floor could be heard approaching the room, and soon emerged an old man clad in black and white.
“Father Presley,” Oby gasped, her eyes darting between the blind priest and the gentleman who now crept along like a spider, retreating into the shadows.
Father Michael Presley stopped in his tracks, and lifted his head as if sensing something.
Oby furrowed her brow, clearly disconcerted, her eyes still darting between the two men. The stranger now stood motionless in the shadows, his glittering eyes being the only sign giving off his presence.
“I wasn’t expecting you, Father,” Oby whimpered.
The priest lowered his head, and advanced towards her. He stood over her quietly. He remained like that for quite a while.
“There’s a dark force in this room,” the priest finally proclaimed. His voice was stiff. Letting his cane fall to the ground, he stretched his arms and held the girl’s hands.
“We need to pray, dear child, for the devil is always about, prowling like a lion roaring for its prey.”
The priest began praying while Oby kept her gaze on the shadows. She could see the glitter in the man’s eyes losing its spark by the minute, until it diminished altogether. Only then did the priest cease to pray.
He fumbled around for a chair and sat next to the girl who now feigned sleep. He could hear her breathing heavily. He sat there a long time; his face filled with trepidation.
He left the hospital in the first breath of dawn, though rather tentatively. He strongly felt something really bad would befall the girl.
As soon as his footsteps and the tapping of his cane faded away, Oby awoke, and cast her eyes where she had last seen the stranger. There he was, standing motionless, the glimmer in his eyes back.
Oby would live to remember that dawn, etched in her memory like an epitaph on a gravestone. She would remember how she finally accepted the phial from the man with trembling hands, and greedily downed its contents in one single gulp. How she, afterwards, felt a strange warm sensation coursing through her veins. How she, for the first time in her miserable life, felt no throbbing pain in her body.
She would recall how she had cast aside those blankets stinking of death and ambled out of her room feeling more alive than ever; the disbelief in her doctor’s eyes when he saw her emerge. How everyone declared her miraculous recovery as that of the paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda.
Her last memory of her saviour was of him turning into a black smoke that vanished into thin air after lingering awhile in midair. Before disappearing, he had assured that she would have nothing to worry about ever again, and that she would have a free pass to go anywhere she pleased in the world without any hassles of acquiring traveling documentation; that she would stay wherever it tickled her fancy. All she needed to do was pronounce her name.
She would remember the look of her little town as it lay shimmering under a golden sun after she had left the hospital gates. That morning, the image of those little white houses with thatched roofs, perching on the canals, seemed to have been carved out of a Flemish painting by an Old Master.
The sight of her village stretched out in all its glory only whetted her palate. She had more enchanting sights to behold further afield – new places. She would travel all the seven seas in search of wonders.
She would remember leaving Cape St. Francis that very morning, seeing it receding into the background like a mirage.
She could not be certain whether she had heard right, but she thought she heard the old priest’s voice calling her name as her bus began pulling away. She never dared to look back. She was now bound for big cities.
Not even once in all her pilgrimages did she feel a pang of guilt for how she came to beat her terminal illness. She traveled the world with a light heart, sleeping at the best hotels, where valets and concierges would immediately drop to their knees at the mere mention of her name.
She traveled all over, back and forth, until the sights to behold seemed to run dry. She kept at it for years until she decided to go back home. By this time Father Presley had long been late. She heard that the old man died with her name on his lips. In his mumbling, he claimed that she had sold her soul to the devil. Everywhere she looked she could see accusing eyes, until she decided to leave town again.
She now wandered around the world aimlessly, like a lost soul. She couldn’t bring herself to look at her reflection in the mirror. For a while she had noticed that she was not aging a single day. She realized then that what the strange gentleman had offered her was nothing but a simple curse.
The world was no longer inviting to her. It was cold and empty. She felt exhausted deep in her soul, until she decided to take her own life, in vain. To this day, she is still wandering around aimlessly.
Read – Caroline – A Short Story by Okhuosami Fatima, Nigeria
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