“It’s Anton,” the voice went on, and he realized it was the Veck boy, standing just outside the curtain. “The cardinal and the bishop are at my cousin’s hotel. They’re asking for you.”
Father Meyer looked now at the figure on the cross. The figure he had dared to forgive. The stage was set for the climax of the Play, the Passion and the suffering of the Lord. The three crosses had been raised—on the other two, the actors playing the Thieves hung supported by belts beneath their loincloths, as Kaspar Mueller would have been. The Holy Women in their veils and robes clasped their hands and wept. The Roman Centurion stood to one side, pondering. The players gazed up at the wandelnder Leichnam, nailed to Kaspar Mueller’s cross while the old man hid behind a pile of rocks, which would be used later in the Resurrection scene. They spoke to the zombie, and it was Kaspar who answered, in his quavering, old man’s voice.
Behind the cross, Kaspar cried out, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!” and the Pharisees reviled him for calling out to the prophet Elias.
And the figure on the cross, pale and slight, panted and looked up, then down. Reanimated corpse, Father Meyer’s head insisted.
His heart replied, An innocent man, doomed to suffer like this ten times. For each zombie was to be used for ten performances: they had devised ways to fill the holes in its—his—hands with wax, to stitch up and conceal the wound in his side. Ten times they would do this to it. For the glory of God.
And the glory of Oberammergau.
The soldier offered the sponge of vinegar to the creature when Kaspar Mueller cried out, “I thirst.” And it tasted the bile. Father Meyer was certain of it.
“Mother, behold thy son,” Kaspar Mueller gasped.
The zombie looked down at Krista Veck.
Father Meyer gripped his rosary. He could not let this continue. His holy office required he speak the truth of God as he knew it. As long as he was a priest, he was compelled to act on behalf of the Shepherd’s lambs—
“It is over,” said Kaspar. The ribcage of the zombie worked furiously. “Into Thy hands I commend my spirit.” Its head drooped forward.
“Ah,” murmured the cardinal.
A low, ominous rumbling filled the theater. It was the time in the Play for the earthquake and the rending of the Temple. The crosses jittered on the stage. The zombie’s palms began to bleed again.
“It is God’s hand on us!” cried the actor who played Enan.
Blood streamed from its side and hands. Its—his—head bobbed. Father Meyer could abide no more. He rose to his feet and cried, “Ja! It is!”
“Father!” the cardinal said, grabbing his hand.
Father Meyer shook him off and crawled over him. He ran down the stairs to the front of the stage. Before anyone could stop him, he leaped on it and grabbed the wrist of the startled Centurion.
“You cannot do this! As a priest of God, I order you to stop!”
“What? What?” Kaspar demanded, appearing from behind the rocks. He was dressed as the risen Christ, in pure white robes.
“Blasphemer!” Father Meyer shouted at him. He thrust himself away from the Centurion, pushed Krista Veck and the other Holy Women out of his way, and scrabbled onto the rocks. “Help me get him down! For the love of God, help me!”
“Get down from there!” The cardinal’s voice rang over the rising voices of the crowd and the actors. “Get Father Meyer off the stage.”
“Father, please.” Rudi Mangasser, the Centurion, grasped Father Meyer’s ankle. The priest yanked his leg free.
“For God’s sake, Rudi! I baptized you. Help me!” Father Meyer pulled at the spike in the middle of the Leichnam’s palm. It was hammered in all the way to the bone; blood pooled around it, smearing Father Meyer’s fingers.
“Help me. Help me.” He stared at the audience, which had leapt to its feet. Angry faces. Looks of horror. Some were backing away, others rushing forward. Others were crying.
“He is a being! We cannot do this!” He reached across the limp body and yanked off the crown of thorns, bringing skin with it.
A sudden, piercing chorus of screams erupted from the onlookers. Startled, Father Meyer froze and looked at them. Fingers pointed toward the stage—at him, he supposed. He dug his fingers into the zombie’s palm, straining to pull out the nail.
The head slowly lifted. Who had the remote control device? Father Meyer wondered vaguely. But the screams grew louder. People turned to run from the theater. The cardinal and the bishop crossed themselves and sank to their knees.
The head wobbled. Father Meyer took hold of it beneath the jaw to support it. The flesh was hot.
Hot—
The head turned. It was covered with large, red sores from which pus flowed like blood.
“The Pest!” someone shrieked. “It has the Plague!”
Shaking, Father Meyer stared into the sightless eyes. New sores exploded over the zombie’s body even as Father Meyer watched. They ruptured in a jagged line along the would in its side; they traveled over its chest, its stomach.
The heavens filled with a rumbling. The earth—not just the stage—began to shake.
“It’s a trick!” someone shouted. “The priest has the control box!”
There were cries of outrage now. Krista Veck tore off her veil and shook her fist at Father Meyer while Rudi Mangasser scrambled onto the rocks and pulled him down.
“Idiot!” Rudi shouted, slapping Father Meyer across the face as they both fell to the stage floor. “What are you doing, you crazy old man?”
“I? I?” Father Meyer pushed Rudi aside and knelt in front of the zombie. He made the sign of the cross and folded his hands. Two red sores bubbled from his own palms.
Stigmata. But stigmata of a different sort. Of the New Church. And a New sickness, he supposed, which would cripple the world, as the Old sickness had four hundred years before.
He burst into tears and opened his arms. “The covenant is broken. God has spoken through one of His children, to tell us of His great displeasure.
His wounds dropped onto the boards. “A changing corpse? My beloved, my brethren, we are all changing corpses! All!”
“Get him off the stage!” Cardinal Schonbrun shouted again.
“No, don’t touch me! I have it already!” Father Meyer warned, but he knew it was too late.
Then, as one being, the throng roared and flew at him. A hundred hands grabbed him, hitting, punching, crushing. They kicked his shins and aching knees. Someone slammed a fist into his side. A woman he had never seen before wrapped her fingers around his clerical collar and choked him, choked hard until he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see.
Then the face of the woman swelled with boils. He watched, horrified, as they burst and a thick, oozing pus ran down her face.
“She’s got it, too!” shouted a man beside her.
She grabbed her face and wailed. Sores rose on the backs of her hands, exploded, splattering the man’s face; and everywhere the infection touched him, pustules rose, crusted, split. The man fell to his knees, shrieking.
The contagion engulfed the crowd like a flood of forty days and forty nights. Cries of terror shattered Father Meyer’s ears. The sky pounded with thunder, the hoof beats of four horsemen; timbers and scenery fractured and crashed. The stage split open, and the ground beneath it, and people screamed and flailed wildly as they tumbled into the pit. All, all tore asunder.
A jag of lightning slammed into the cross on the stage, igniting it at the base, bonfire-hot. Hellfire-hot. The zombie opened its mouth once, twice. Its head lolled to the side, and its sightless gaze moved, moved.
It fixed on Father Meyer. Seemed to look at him… yes! Froze there, staring at the priest of the Old Church, the Old love.
Behold thy son. Behold him.