Sin of the Saints (Between Delusion and Sobriety Duet #2)

Chapter 39

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Bartimaeus

Three days later

S ometimes we wish with all our hearts for something to happen, and our desires are completely ignored. Sometimes, in the heat of the moment and accidentally, we wish for something horrible to happen, and that, of all wishes, comes true. Is that His way of punishing us for our sins?

The church is all lit with candles and the flames are going wild – like the storm of emotion within me. The choir sings their hymn and the pipe organ sends vibrations through my heart. I try to focus on the lyrics, but as far as I’m concerned they could be singing the grocery list hanging on a home refrigerator, it wouldn’t change a thing.

Because it wouldn’t matter for Belle.

The choir isn’t singing for her, or they’d be singing an elegy. Instead they praise the Creator and seek to instill hope in all those Belle left behind.

I look at her father, sitting in the front row, his face cold and expressionless like he’s used to this. With all his sorrow, at least he knew what to do. He’s not lost as he surely was the first time, when his wife took her own life. Maybe his humanity died with her.

The elderly woman sitting next to him, on the other hand, is weeping bitterly, and I can feel her grief. Belle told me about her, their housekeeper, the maternal figure in Belle’s life. The only healthy mother figure in her life.

Her father chose an open casket. It’s a wise decision. Belle was stunningly beautiful in life, and in death she finally looks at peace, like she’d found the thing she’d been searching for and managed to part ways with what had haunted her in life. If only the same had been true for me, because Belle was the one haunting me; and not only will her death not leave me, it’s also left a heavier burden.

Was Belle free of her torment? Had God been waiting for her on the other side even though she’d resented Him in life?

I’d very much like to believe that, it could be comforting, but the truth is that this process of seeking out Belle’s faith led me to lose mine. In the end, the words she left behind are the scars I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life, and her death seals the fate of my faith.

When the priest begins speaking, I lower my gaze and open the notebook that had been left among her possessions, before they were taken out of the hospital. I couldn’t let her father or anyone else read the story she’d made up. After all, there was truth in it. It had been her escape. I could tell the difference between truth and fiction, some wouldn’t, and I’d be passing judgment on things that had only happened in her imagination, and mine.

I’m not completely innocent – I feel guilty. I was responsible for her deterioration. She’d been my responsibility and I’d allowed her to sink into her madness. You might say I even encouraged her to do so. I urged her to write even when her imagination sailed away into forbidden territory. I thought that if she came to know them she’d be free of them, purified of them, and that would lead her to the peace she sought. To forgiveness from the one she felt undeserving of. And not because she had no faith at her side, but because she truly and honestly believed He had banished her, that she was forever destined to be damned, transparent among his hypocritical followers.

I told her once that angels walk among us and demons exist within us, and she was the most shining testament to that. She was the first woman to open my eyes to everything I’d refused to see. She was an angel and a demon. Belle was everything to me.

I look around the church and am pleased the administrator isn’t among those present. It would have been a slap in the face if he of all people had attended. I notice Ellis’ golden hair. His face is downcast and agonized, and he presses his hands together, seemingly immersed in prayer.

I wonder who he’s praying for – Belle’s soul, or his own?

I return to her notebook and read her words, her pain, her truth, and I’m having trouble breathing. The word suddenly seems so dark now that she’s gone, and I don’t know where I’ll go from here. The road I’ve paved my whole life has vanished like it never existed. I acted in the name of the Church, I learned to help cast out the demons dwelling in the most lost souls, and I failed.

In her passing I’ve returned to my original state – blindness. And worst of all, I still haven’t solved what precisely led to her end. As if she hasn’t punished me enough, she’s now cursed me with lack-of-knowledge.

The bell chimes and echoes in the hall, and I raise my head so sharply it’s like the knocker has struck right in my heart. The church empties out and Belle’s coffin is gone, all that’s left are the flames continuing to dance wildly, a very threatening look. I was immersed in reading and my thoughts, and didn’t notice what was happening around me. I stand, dazed, to watch the coffin be lowered into the earth, and a few pages fall out of the notebook.

I lift them and read the title with amazement, written in Belle’s handwriting: The Final Chapter.