Violaceous

Every night at midnight, the purple clouds came out to dance with the blushing sky.

So began the human interest teaser at the end of the 10 o'clock news. A poetic and mysterious prelude to a story sure to catch the interest of this predominantly Catholic city. And perhaps a little cheesy. Archbishop Killough thought so and felt ashamed of those who marketed such a holy event.

The girl's parents were neither mesmerized nor pleased with the newscast's flowery rhetoric. The media were selling cars and mattresses and dishwashers, and they were using their daughter to do it. Media darlings, who had the very issues that made them such, were never good at coping with the type of attention that followed. It was as if the most entrusted secrets were being broadcast for everyone to see--friends, relatives, and even strangers.

It was the new atmospheric phenomenon that stirred wonder from weathermen and alarm from climate change doomsters, but opened the watchful eyes of the Vatican.

Social media and conspiracy gossip exploded in tumult. The news department of Newscape 10 felt it was missing the boat, so a special report was round-tabled, written, proofed, approved, and shot all in one day.

For three months now 13-year-old Violet has drawn the crowds who had come to see her draw the clouds. Emerging from her suburban home at three minutes to midnight, on her knees the moment after, and deep in prayer the moment after that. At midnight the clouds luminesce violet, straight out of the aether, whether moonlit or not, and Violet enters her ecstasy.

Non constat de supernaturalitate, Archbishop Killough wrote, and sent it to the Vatican immediately: This event is not confirmed to be of supernatural origin.

Not yet, he thought.

He had made pilgrimages.

To Fátima, "worthy of belief" since 1930, to pray the Rosary where shepherd children Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta had witnessed their Marian visitations and had received the prophesies.

To the Pyrenees, to the Grotto of the Apparitions in Lourdes, where Bernadette had witnessed her visions of the Virgin Mary eighteen times until the government had barricaded it. The barricades long gone, Killough felt a different kind of barrier--the cold, yet he dipped in its spring, for this was an official Marian apparition site according to the Church. And his arthritis...who knows?

To Bosnia-Herzegovina, to see the Sun sign with the faithful on the hill Crnica in Medjugorje. He had even had his picture taken with the visionary, Vicka, hoping he would still be there for the Blessed Mother's revelation of her tenth and final secret. He waits for it, still, but he waits patiently thousands of miles removed in his rectory adjacent to St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans.

The Vatican was still studying the Medjugorje event, which was still in progress it seemed. The official Church disposition, like that of what he had written about the purple clouds here, was Non constat de supernaturalitate:

Nothing proven or disproven.

It was with some sense of satisfaction that the New Orleans miracle, as he saw it, shared the same status as that of Medjugorje.

The reply from Rome was on his computer the next morning. It was slightly different from what he had sent. Constat de non supernaturalitate. He had to read it again, as it seemed merely to repeat what he had sent. Then he realized the difference between Non constant and Constant de non...

What a difference word order makes! he thought.

Where he had reported his parish's miracle was unconfirmed as to whether or not it was supernatural, the Jesuits in the Vatican had responded that it was confirmed to be of non-supernatural origin.

Damned Jesuits, he thought. Then he crossed himself to erase his evil thought. Evil thoughts are the natural condition of sinful humanity, he remembered from Genesis.

Right before midnight each night, troubled parents allowed their daughter to wander to the street in front of her home. They had tried to stop her, but something had stopped them. She went to her knees each time, and she entered her ecstasy as the sudden purple clouds descended upon her.

The crowds had become difficult, gridlocking all traffic. Police had to cordon off the area by 10 PM, but things congested earlier and earlier until the barriers stayed up all day. Neighbors complained. Then they stopped. Something had stopped them.

In spite of the traffic and the number of people, the whole thing was still a quiet affair. The crowds went silent reverently when the clouds appeared, except for an awed hush. Then the birds and crickets began, responding to a false dawn. All remained--the hush, the birds, the crickets--until the clouds lifted back an hour later. The whole thing, truth be told, was a private affair--between the cloud and the young girl, Violet, whose very name added credibility to her being chosen.

After three months, she began to say things from within the purplish haze around her head. Apparition had become revelation, but as the linguists joined the faithful to record her voice each night, it was soon evident: this was no known language. Yet, it was also no mumbo jumbo, since the linguists were able to point out apparent syntactical structuring and had begun to assemble a rudimentary vocabulary.

Each day Violet and her parents had two visitors: Archbishop Killough and Michael Lahasky, Newscape 10 Special Features producer. Their visits often overlapped. Her parents had agreed to the media interviews only to keep their daughter safe from the religious fanatics. After all, it's not unlike the spooked faithful to crucify someone, were confusion to reach some critical mass.

Today, there was a confession for both men to hear, with both spiritual and journalistic import.

"I've been entrusted with a terrible secret," she admitted. Both men closed their pads of notes, but Lahasky took out his digital recorder.

"Please, put that away, Mr. Lahasky," Violet's father asked.

"Sorry. I just thought..."

"You thought wrong," said her mother, who was showing the extra facial lines of the ordeal. With that settled, Killough and Lahasky sat waiting. After the longest of moments, Violet spoke.

"I was told, 'They are no longer the chosen people.'"

Violet's face was one of equanimity. Lahasky knew this look--the look of composure, professional calmness, when reporting the most terrible things.

"Who are they?" Killough asked. Like all Catholics, he had always felt the Catholics had been the chosen people after--and because--the Jews had killed their Messiah. A wry grin of satisfaction emerged on the Archbishop's face.

"There are a new chosen people?" Lahasky asked. As a Jew, this was beginning to sound a bit antisemitic.

"That's all I was told, except I was also told that this information should be enough for a new beginning."

"For who, sweetheart? Who to begin what?" Her father asked. Violet began to cry softly, as if she had again returned to occupy the real person reporting the night's events. Her mother went over to her to comfort her.

"I think that'll be all," her mother told their visitors.

The next evening, the ongoing news segment on Violet released the message. It was picked up by the national networks and all the affiliates. The next day four synagogues were bombed. It was to this change in the world that Violet went out the following midnight. It was to this enlightenment that she received her clouds of purple.

This time the crowds did not fall silent when they appeared. There was no hush of awe. There was too much noise to hear birds or crickets.

There were opposing factions--Rabbis and priests--looking to face this harbinger of the supposed new ecclesiastical order--challenge her, debate her or, alternatively, support her. There were also Buddhist monks, Hindu Swamis, representatives of imams, Mormon Elders and sisters, and even a Wiccan delegation. There were flowing robes of many types and colors, and a wide assortment of headdress coifs, on Nuns and Trappistines. There was a terrific amount of noise. Cacophony, in fact.

Many saw the need to represent their sect before any more messages were to come. There were those who intended to curry favor with the girl to jockey their sect into position.

There were those who loved her. There were those who feared her. There were those who had like things the way they were. Before the clouds. Before her.

This time, when the cloud of purple came upon her, Violet seemed to be listening intently. This was different. She nodded affirmatively. She smiled with pride. She said nothing. She had just listened.

She was in bed for 1:30 AM, but the crowds had stayed. Who would be the newly chosen people?

Earlier that calendar day, Sunnis began raids against the Iranian Shia militias; Pakistan began nuclear saber-rattling. Palestinians' and Israelis' tentative quiet was quiet no more, and the border between them thickened over the miles of conflict that waged. Competing Orthodoxies began a war of words over the Internet, self-appointing themselves the only ones worthy.

It was a new awareness by which Violet heard the next message from within her cloud. Again, she just listened. Nodded. Smiled.

The cloud, as customary, arose after it was all over, but this time she did not allow herself to be escorted back into her sequestered house. This time, when her face had finally become visible again, she rose from her feet and faced the crowd--jerking her head this way and that to see the entire circle of faces eagerly waiting.

Tonight, her mother and father were with her. Nothing, this time, has stopped them.

She spoke--loudly, articulately, and with certainty. She did not stop to breathe, her message delivered in one exhalation until her face was as purple as the cloud that had hidden it a moment earlier.

"My visitor has spoken," she said. "My visitor tells you this: 'So many points of view--and you have forever to sort them out. Those who are content to wait forever are the damned; no, instead, it will be those who paint the true picture of me who will be with me for eternity. Forever is not eternity. The Eternals will survive those who rely on forever.'"

"Uh, could you repeat that?" a police officer asked before being drowned out by the growing murmuring.

She became hypoxic and collapsed, and her father scooped her up. There was no shortage of supporters to split the sea between where she was held and her front door. By the time she was inside, her face's color had returned. A moment later, the doorbell rang, and the Archbishop and the Newscape 10 reporter had joined her parents and her in the living room.

"What did all that you said even mean?" Lahasky asked. Violet sat silently.

"I know what it meant," Archbishop Killough said. Violet looked up at him with a mocking grin. "Violet," he said, "everyone has assumed your visitations are from the Blessed Mother, or one of the Apostles, or even God Himself. Certainly, the color purple has significant meaning in the Church."

"I know," Violet said, and her face glowed. Beyond blusing--into radiance. Her mother put her hand to her mouth. Killough knew, though, that this wasn't some sign of beatification. He knew it, instead, to represent conflagration--a cremation of some sort.

"Purple is the Lenten color of sorrow and suffering," he said, more to himself.

"Yes," Violet agreed. "Sorrow and suffering--all things to come," she said. "The world will know of these in ways never having been seen in all of history."

Lahasky pulled out his small notepad. "Tell us more, Violet," he urged. She looked slowly his way, then sniggered.

"Violet," Killough resumed, "this is not the Mother Mary now, is it?" Violet turned back to the Archbishop.

"No," she answered.

"It's not some saint, Jesus, or God Himself." Violet wouldn't answer.

"Why won't you say?" her father asked.

"There are things I will not say," she answered. "Names I will not utter."

"Violet," Killough continued, "could you possibly be in a conversation with the devil? Evil? Satan? Nothing but bad has come from all this." Again, she just smiled queerly. "If so, what do you think about that?"

Her mother crossed herself, as did the Jew, Lahasky. Violet tilted her head in thought.

Finally, she said, "Y'know, Archbishop Killough, I kinda like it."

TO BE CONTINUED