Chapter 7: The Dorian Collective
Be Not Afraid
A strange rustling bounced echos through the church’s vaulted ceilings as Harvey creaked open the doors and entered the brightly-lit atrium. The afternoon sun loomed overhead, filling the space with enough sunlight to darken the rest of the nave within. Harvey squinted as he took several steps forward, but quickly realized no one had turned to greet him, just the backs of heads and the usual sentiment that came with the reverence of stepping foot on holy ground.
A crucifix hung beyond the altar, its model of Jesus realistic enough to raise the hair on the back of Harvey’s neck. The crown of thorns caught his eyes first—rustic oak interwoven across its forehead—initiating several streaks of blood that had already worked their way down its jawline. The painful grimace stretching across its face accentuated the violence of it all.
A handful of solemn, face-forward bodies had scattered themselves among the pews—none too close to another—save for the Warwick family clumped in a huddled mass near the front. Shoulders slumped. Tissues in hand.
As they waited, the congregation waded through the silence of a physical space built for music, but void of it. Every cough or restless stir amplified into reverberating noise. Most of the congregation sat undeterred by the ache of it all, but it seemed to have the opposite effect on Harvey. Chills ran deep enough into his bones that he folded his arms across his chest just to keep himself grounded.
“Please stand and join us in the singing of hymn number 302.”
And the service began.
A pair of altar boys, followed by a middle-aged priest, entered through a side door and processed through the nearest aisle of pews while a wiry-haired rail of a woman shuffled to the piano at the far end of the sanctuary and hovered her veiny hands over the keys.
“You shall cross the barren desert…”
The G-chord that lifted her thin lips to the microphone rang so delicately from the piano that the power of her voice nearly consumed it.
“If you pass through raging waters…”
Harvey shivered. His mother—a devout Catholic in her own time—had practically played the cassette on repeat during the thousands of car rides they’d taken together when he was a child.
“Be not afraid,” the woman sang. “I go before you always.”
The altar boys passed Harvey with unflinching posture, keeping cadence through the parted pews. It was what they’d been taught. The closest boy to him held a crucifix, pointed to the altar under ninety-degree elbows. The second held a candle that wobbled slightly as he moved. Its wax dripped from its wick, pooling in the handle’s gold-rimmed basin.
The matching crew cuts and Irish eyes made it obvious that they were brothers—two kids forced into duty, not from the kindness of their hearts.
The priest bounced from one side of the aisle to the opposite behind the marching boys, greeting the congregation one-by-one with a series of quick nods or passing hellos. He, too, had bright eyes, a pair that calmed the sea of wrinkles across his aging face. The rest of himself hid beneath a golden-etched emerald vestment that dangled from his shoulders in a foray of fabric.
He reached Harvey’s pew and nodded in his traditionally passive way, but then hesitated as he caught a peripheral glimpse of him. A bizarre curiosity overcame the priest’s demeanor as he paused to narrow his fragmented focus.
“Good morning,” the priest whispered. “Glad you’re here.”
Harvey nodded, but the acute—and instant—interest in him forced an immediate retreat into the back of his pew. The priest stood before him, staring and smiling, while Harvey had no other choice but to avert his eyes. The priest tore away as the altar boys bowed and climbed the three steps to the sanctuary. He followed suit, kissed the altar, and addressed the congregation as the piano swooned into arpeggiated chords and came to a close. The final notes hung heavy in the rafters, extinguished only by the church’s impending silence.
“My brothers and sisters,” he began. “God is with us—always—in times of deep sadness. I appreciate the Warwicks’ choice of gathering song for our services today because it reminds us that we must have courage in the face of suffering. It’s not an easy task by any means, but we must do it. Why? Because of our strength in God.”
The priest’s baritone voice hit Harvey’s ears like thrown rocks—counterintuitive to what Harvey presumed would come from a man with such a spindly frame—but there was a confidence in the way he projected each word he spoke. One thought blended into another until it thinned into background noise. The best speakers—the best persuasionists—use space to their advantage.
And that’s what the priest did. People listened when he spoke. That much was clear.
“For those who are new to our community, my name is Father Tim Collins and I will be presiding over today’s celebration of life.”
Father Collins moved to the front of the altar, pausing between each new sentence before continuing. Choosing his words carefully seemed to be of utmost priority.
“Dominic Warwick was a quiet man—not particularly religious, either—but someone who knew where to find true faith. In recent weeks, he’d rejuvenated his relationship with God. He asked me to be his spiritual advisor and, of course, I accepted. He was a kind-hearted person who only wanted the best for the people he cared about.”
The long-winded spiel grew stale almost as quickly as Father Collins could deliver it, so before long, Harvey found himself sifting through a copy of the missal he’d found crammed into the pocket of the pew in front of him.
“Talk, talk, talk. It’s funny, isn’t it? No one here knows he was a part of Dom’s disappearance, do they? Gives a whole new meaning to the term playing God, if you ask me.”
Before Harvey could swivel, the man’s forearm stopped him.
“Don’t turn. He’ll notice.”
“Who?” Harvey asked.
“You heard me correctly, Harvey. Father Collins is one of them. Has been for quite some time from what I’ve heard.”
He whispered so quietly that Harvey had to focus only on his voice to hear what he was saying.
“Who are you?” Harvey asked, heart aflutter. “What do you want?”
Father Collins lifted his hands to the congregation as he continued the service, eyes scanning the sea of bodies before him.
“Join me as we say…”
He, along with a smattering of voices closest to the front, recited a prayer Harvey had never heard. The man behind Harvey used this to his advantage and upped the volume of his voice.
“It’s not what I want, Mr. Divvy. It’s what Dom wanted. He had a sneaking suspicion that something like this would happen. I guess you can call me his contingency plan.”
Harvey squirmed against the contour of his pew. Every time the stranger’s breath brushed the bend of his ear, he cringed.
“Whatever this is, I’m not interested,” he said.
The congregation’s voices grew louder.
“Under the circumstances, I think you should hear what I have to say. Meet me at my office after the service. Come alone.”
He slipped something—a business card?—down the curvature of Harvey’s spine. It met resistance at his shoulder blades before falling to the base of the pew with a gentle slap.
“I’ll see you soon.”
“Wait!” Harvey whispered. “Who are you? Why should I trust you?”
“I’m a friend,” the stranger answered. “That’s all you need to know for now. If you want answers, let go of your inhibitions and trust me. When you come—if you come—make sure you’re not followed. Seriously.”
Amen, the crowd spoke.
A unified buzz blanketed the room with enough of a distraction to shield the stranger’s exit—to all but Father Collins—who pretended to busy himself in prayer.
“Bow your heads and pray for God’s blessing,” he said.
As the rest of the congregation dutifully dropped their eyes, Father Collins watched as Harvey kept his stare straight ahead, directed at him, unflinching.
***
“Mr. Divvy!”
Harvey slipped the pair of buttons through the front of his jacket as he descended the front steps of the church, out into the open air of the city.
“Mr. Divvy!”
Harvey knew the voice. It was the one person he wanted to avoid, the sole reason he’d slipped through the doors and out onto the sidewalk so quickly.
The ushers—a pair of older gentlemen—held open the double doors as Father Collins toppled out from the vestibule and mazed his way down the church’s perron toward him.
“Is everything alright, Father?” Harvey asked.
Everything about the priest looked uneasy, too over the top.
“The family wanted me to tell you,” he spoke between breaths, “they’re having a small gathering at their home. They’d love for you to join.”
Harvey relaxed his shoulders. It was clear he had to do something to lessen the tension he emanated, so he dropped the skepticism from his stance, despite the need to keep his guard up.
“You didn’t have to rush down here just to tell me that, but thank you, Father,” answered Harvey, “and very generous of Dom’s family to include me.”
Father Collins wiped a line of sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief he procured from a pocket underneath his vestments, then refolded and replaced it as though it hadn’t been used at all.
“So you’ll come then? I’d very much like to hear about your days in Boston. Dom told me a little before...well...” Father Collins paused, distancing his eyes to the sky, “...you know.”
The real interest in Boston should’ve come as no surprise to Harvey, but a jolt of concern marked his face with it anyway.
“I’d love to, but I have to get going, Father. I was just here to pay my respects.”
The priest’s demeanor shifted. His posture straightened. His eyes grew cold.
“Listen, Harvey,” he began, lowering his voice. “I think you know that Dominic spoke to me about much of what happened.”
Harvey offered no volley of a response. He knew where this was going.
“In confidence, of course,” Collins continued, “but, if I’m being honest? I’d been made aware of the situation a long time ago. It was my job to lure him in, get him to tell me the truth. The actual truth.”
Harvey swallowed to loosen the knot in his throat. It bobbed between chest and jaw like ping pong balls just before a lottery drawing.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes you do, Harvey,” he said. “They warned you this would happen. You know, see if he would budge.”
If Collins could shift his demeanor so quickly, Harvey could do the same.
“What did you do?”
“This isn’t about me,” answered the priest. “This is about you. You broke your promise.”
Harvey wasted no time closing the gap between them, pushing in so close that the tips of their noses touched. The muscles in his jaw clenched, violent pulsing down into his neck.
“There it is,” Collins continued. “There’s the aggression she told me about. I was beginning to wonder how far I’d have to push before you let it out.”
“Who’s she?”
He already knew the answer, but Harvey asked anyway. He’d seen her quippy sardonic smile in his dreams every night since that day in the hospital.
“Annette,” Collins answered. “You remember, don’t you? You broke your promise to her. The one you made that night in the hospital.”
The strength began to leave Harvey’s legs, knees quivering under the guise of his khaki slacks.
“So you killed him?”
“She warned you this would happen,” said Collins. “Dom was too close to the source.”
“That’s it,” Harvey growled, pointing a finger between the priest’s eyes. “I’m going to the police. All of this is—”
“Insane? So what if it is?” Collins asked. “You owe them a debt now. They asked you to watch Dom and you didn’t. They take things like that very seriously. It’s loyalty.”
Fire consumed Harvey’s eyes.
“I don’t owe them shit.”
Harvey’s voice amplified enough to carry, so Collins leaned forward and grabbed Harvey by the shoulders, just enough to keep him from doing something he might regret.
“You most certainly owe them a debt, Harvey,” said the priest, “and one way or another, it’ll be paid.”
“Let’s see what the police say about that.”
“Harvey, they own the police. Who do you think killed Dom?”
The oxygen in Harvey’s lungs pushed its way out, leaving him choking on voided air.
“No. I don’t believe you. I don’t believe any of it.”
Father Collins’s eyes softened enough to shift his hold on Harvey from pure restraint to something more like empathy.
“You can’t push them. You can’t hide. If it doesn’t fit the Plan, it doesn’t matter to them.”
The way those last words fell from the priest’s mouth caught Harvey in a way that no others had.
“Plan?” Harvey asked. “What plan?”
The smile stretching the priest’s face snuffed most of the heat from the color in his eyes.
“God’s plan! The Collective are His angels, come to Earth to do His work.”
“Is that what they told you?”
“You’re skeptical. That’s understandable. From what Annette tells me, you’ve always been one to keep your head down,” continued Collins, “but this is not the time to bury your head in the sand. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. No man can do what I’ve seen them do. They are Messengers sent from God Himself.”
Claustrophobia dug deep into Harvey’s bones, the buildings rushing toward him. The whoosh of passing cars, the intermittent chattering of passersby, the electric buzz of streetlights and storefronts—it pummeled the inside of his skull like a hammer to nails.
It was all too much.
“I have to go,” he said.
“God’s Plan!” said the priest.
But Harvey had already shuffled away from him, heading for the four-way intersection ahead. Father Collins mumbled a string of incoherent words before the last of them hit his ears, clear as polished crystal.
“He has a Plan for us, Harvey! All of us!”
The world spun into ribbons of color, but Harvey managed to lift his eyes as he crossed the street. The pavement tilted with each step he took.
“You’re fine,” he said, but he spoke the words into existence to convince himself of it anyway. “Just breathe.”
But that’s when he saw them—Annette and Agatha—shoulder-to-shoulder just a ways ahead, staring at him with those steely eyes he dreamt of every restless night.
“Hello, Harvey,” said Annette. “It’s been awhile.”