THIRTEEN
St Damian’s was a small church on Eighteenth Street near Diamond. The church proper was constructed of soot-blackened sandstone, with a tall Palladian entrance arch. Above the door was a carved pediment. A small stone cross jutted from the peaked gable.
On either side of the church were narrow, three-story, redbrick structures, most likely containing the rectory, as well as administrative offices.
A low wrought-iron fence guarded the entrance, but it appeared the gate had long ago been stolen. Jessica could only imagine that it now graced the entrance to someone’s home in North Philly. She had always imagined that the surest route to hell was to steal something from a church. Once, when she was about seven or eight, she had taken an umbrella from the vestibule at St Paul’s. She brought it back the next day, and after somewhere around 400 Hail Marys was certain she would dwell in fire for all eternity.
In all, St Damian’s looked to be a typical, struggling Philly neighborhood parish. Except for one glaring fact.
‘It’s closed,’ Jessica said.
A small sign next to the door confirmed what seemed apparent. The parish had merged with another, larger parish, located three blocks away.
Jessica and Byrne walked around to the back of the rectory, peered into the windows. The glass was grimy and nearly opaque with soot and exhaust.
At the rear entrance was a gate that led to a square courtyard. Jessica pushed open the gate. In the small area were a few trash bags, a pair of bald tires.
‘Kevin.’
Jessica pointed to the broken window in one panel of the door. She looked more closely. There was no glass on the outside, so it had the signs of a break in. She shone her Maglite in the window. The glazing had been puttied and reputtied many times, so this did not appear to be the first time someone had broken into the property.
Jessica looked inside. The shattered glass on the floor did not have dust on it. The break-in was recent.
The narrow passageway led to the rear of the nave, the main part of the church. On the right was the sacristy, long ago defiled by trespassers. As they stepped into the church, Jessica instinctively reached to the side, expecting to dip her fingers into the holy water font. There was none there.
Ahead, the nave was virtually empty. There was black plastic taped over the windows. The stained-glass panes had either been transferred elsewhere, stolen, or broken. Some daylight leaked in, but the interior was dark. Jessica and Byrne both used their Maglites.
As she moved toward the front of the church Jessica saw that most of the pews had been removed, as had most of the statuary. One small statue of the Virgin Mary lay on its side to the right of the altar.
A few pigeons, frightened by their presence, took wing into the eaves.
There was dust and grime and bird droppings on every surface. The air was suffused with dry rot and the sickly sweet smell of long dead flowers.
‘I’m going to check downstairs,’ Byrne said.
‘Okay.’
When Jessica reached the vestibule, which let in a little bit of light from the street, she saw that the ambry – the niche used to house the three oils – was intact.
Jessica turned, looked down the aisle that had once led to the altar. She thought for a moment what it must have been like when this church was new, about families in the neighborhood coming here on Saturday afternoon for confession, on Sunday mornings for mass. She thought about the baptisms, marriages, and funerals. She thought about how small churches were truly the pillars of a neighborhood, and how sad that this once proud place of worship now stood abandoned.
Mostly she thought about her own childhood, how St Paul’s was the center of her life. She had attended kindergarten through eighth grade there, had made her first Holy Communion and confirmation there. She had gotten married by the same priest who had baptized her, Father Rocco Basconi.
‘Jess.’
Jessica looked toward the stairs leading to the basement. She saw the beam of Byrne’s flashlight playing against the door-jamb. She crossed the church, stood at the top of the stairs, looked toward the cellar.
Byrne stood there, his tall frame silhouetted against the stone backdrop. As Jessica descended the steps she felt a new chill, even deeper than the cold of the unheated church.
When she reached the last step Jessica pointed her flashlight at the opposite wall. The basement was entirely empty, save for an object on the floor, perhaps directly underneath where the altar was on the main floor.
‘What is it, Kevin?’
Byrne didn’t answer. Jessica saw the muscles cord on his neck. She had seen it happen many times before, and it never bode well. Byrne took out his cell phone, stepped toward the stairway.
Her flesh rising in goose bumps, Jessica glanced at the box on the floor. It was not a box after all. It was, instead, an old washing tub, oval in shape, about twenty inches across. It reminded her of the brushed aluminum tubs in which her grandmother would let her and her brother Michael sit on the hottest days of August, the South Philly equivalent of an above-ground pool.
This tub was covered with a worn and laundered burlap cloth. Jessica snapped on a latex glove, gently peeled back the burlap.
What she saw took her legs from under her.
There, inside the tub, suspended in a crystalline block of ice, was a newborn baby.