It had been the longest night of her life.

Magdalene went to sleep from exhaustion, too wrought with anguish to do more than eat a few morsels of bread and fall asleep in Mary’s arms. Even His mother had been worn, her face stained with tears, the few disciples who crept back into the upper room too upset to meet her gaze. They returned, trailing in from the darkness like lost lambs returning to the fold… all but Judas. He had hanged himself and though none of them spoke of it, Magdalene knew it lay on all their minds. That night had followed a long, terrible day in which she watched the man she worshipped nailed to a wooden cross. She had remained there throughout, clinging to Mary and straining to see him through the stifling darkness.

When it ended at last, and their beloved Messiah breathed His last, they had not known what to do with the body. Usually, Rome left the naked corpse out in the sun to rot, but a wealthy friend went to Pilate and requested permission to take it to a tomb nearby. Pilate, not wanting to prolong the incident any further, had agreed.

When Joseph of Arimathea returned to them, he said the governor had been quieter and more subdued than usual. Troubled, with dark circles beneath his eyes and a haunted air to his movements. He kept washing his hands, with no water or basin in sight.

He should be, Magdalene thought bitterly. It’s not every day he condemns an innocent man to death!

John, the only male disciple not to flee in terror and forsake Him, had helped lower Yeshua down from the cross. They had borne the body to the tomb, where the women carefully wrapped him in linen and removed the crown of thorns from around his head. Some of them stuck deep, and beads of His precious blood trickled from the wounds. Magdalene had crushed them with her hands. Marks remained in her skin, wounds that did little to ease her suffering. She would not have them preserved, passed among the others, a relic stained with his precious life. His cloak had been lost in a game of lots. She had watched in horror as the insensitive guards had bartered away what little he owned in the presence of the others.

She and the women had herbs and spices, but lacked sufficient time to preserve him properly. They lost the light and were forced to observe the Sabbath. The little jars full of precious, expensive perfumes waited on a nearby table and, although she had taken part in all the familiar rituals, Magdalene continually glanced at them and wished the long hours would end. How she missed His presence among them, the sound of His laughter, His gentle voice, the eyes that saw everyone at once yet seemed to focus on them individually. Her mind would not be silent that night, for while the others slept, she lay on her side, staring at the jars and thinking of Him.

She remembered when first they met, when six demons had possessed her. Everyone else who encountered her were repulsed by her terrible appearance and snarls, and frightened of her, but not Him. Their possession made her unclean, and so too would anyone be who touched her. No one ever approached her or spoke to her. They were ashamed of her, afraid of her, threw stones at her and shouted for her to leave the village.

That night, when he encamped on the hills above her home, the fire drew her to him.

That and … something she could not explain, a kind of curiosity that originated within the demons, the desire to meet this “messiah.” He sends his son to live among us as men! Vulnerable is He… we will kill Him! Pathetic, weak, human forms they are, knowing nothing of our ways or the ways of their so-called master!

She terrified even Simon Peter when she appeared beyond the reaches of the flames. She crept in among them without a sound, scurrying across the ground on all fours, as the demons had not quite figured out how to work her limbs. Her sudden appearance in their midst made the men leap back from her, one or two of them drawing their daggers. She made a fearsome sight in her torn garments, her hair and eyes wild. Yeshua merely sat there, staring into the fire. “You risk much in coming here,” he said, not to her but to the writhing mass of demons within.

They hissed at him, using her vocal cords. “We wanted to see Him, whom they call the messiah,” many voices answered through her. Her throat stung, and her eyes watered. Pressed in on all sides, she tried to claw her way through them, but they had full control. Over her voice, her eyes, her hands. And they did terrible things with them.

Frightened faces peered at her from the darkness, the gleam of Simon Peter’s knife catching the firelight.

Please, Magdalene pleaded with him, unable to cry her own tears. Please save me!

None of them could know her torment. Her pain. The anguish that came upon her at night, when she could not even turn over as her limbs shook and the earth grew cold beneath her. The demons did not care how much she suffered. They reveled in her pain. Used her, as they had used the man before her, until his limbs snapped and his breath gave out.

Yeshua handed the bread he had been eating to the nearest child, for a few traveled with them, and stood. He was tall and muscular, well-shaped from his carpentry work, and tanned by the sun. Magdalene felt drawn to him, humbled in his presence, hopeful as she cried out inwardly, Help me. If you really are the messiah, help me!

“We see He is not so special after all,” the demons snarled, but she knew they were frightened. They saw the light over this man, a faint hue invisible to human eyes but not to hers, tainted as they were with the lens of evil.

He did not move, did not approach her, but still they flinched. “Come out of her,” he said.

Hope surged through her heart. She felt something unseen pull on her, but the demons resisted. They squirmed, and she did too, like a child’s cloth doll contorted into unpleasant shapes. “No,” they hissed as one. “She is ours.”

“She is not yours. Come out of her.”

For years they had been her constant companions, and they did not go willingly; it felt as if she were being torn apart from within and her anguished screams pierced the darkness as Yeshua commanded them to leave. Their claws raked her from the inside, digging into her mind and leaving deep scars, but He forced them out of her with a silence that lingered even after she collapsed in a heap, panting. She raised her trembling hands and cried out with joy. They were bruised, and the nails ragged, but she had control over them once again. Tears held in for months streamed from her eyes.

How long had it been? Days? Weeks? Months? Years?

Too long.

But now she was free at last.

No longer would they torment her, slamming her into rocks and ravines for the sheer amusement of it; no longer would they cut and burn her. No longer were they in her head, whispering foul things to her. Perverse things. Things that made her feel ashamed. All the horrific thoughts she had endured were gone, though her body wore the scars of their abuses, pale white reminders of the fury and the flames. They enjoyed torturing her, making her speak profane words.

She sobbed. Her cracked lips could barely form the words. “T-thank you, Messiah!”

His fingers, rough from a life of carpentry, rested on the top of her head. A quiet voice told her, “Mary, arise.”

No one had touched her since her possession. She had not known until now how much she craved human kindness.

Her chest tightened with emotion, and she could not speak around the lump in her throat. Magdalene looked at him for the first time without demon eyes and felt none of the fear and repulsion they had in his presence; instead, she fell on her face and kissed his dusty feet in his sandals. They smelled of sweat and travel, but she breathed them in with gratitude. So this was the Messiah she heard about, the one rumored to be the Son of God. He came to fulfill the prophecies. To save them. To save her.

“All that I am and have ever been, all that I will be, even unto my very life,” she promised him, “is yours.”

She heard him say, “Peter, find her something to eat. We are one more tonight…. come, Mary. Sit beside me and tell me your story. I want to hear it.” He offered her his hand and as she took it, the scars that covered her arms, visible through her torn garments, from cuts and burns and other injuries, faded and became whole again.

Even the memory of the possession dulled in her mind. She saw only Him.

Yeshua walked with her to the fire, sat beside her on the ground, and heard her sad story as they broke bread together. No other rabbi had ever given her the time of day, and by the end of the night, she knew he had camped here for a reason.

He had been waiting for her.

And now she waited for him.

Waited to see him again. To wrap his body with the precious herbs and myrrh.

Yet it seemed this night would never end.

The others slept, but not her and not Mary, his mother. Though Magdalene did not reach out to her, she knew the woman lay awake. Both of them watched for the first pinkish hue of dawn. And they were the first to rise when it appeared against the horizon. Her cold, trembling hands shook awake the other women, and they crept out without disturbing the men.

A chill lurked in the path from Jerusalem to the tombs. Trudging the familiar path to the hillside brought back terrible memories, for his blood still stained the way. Places where He had fallen beneath His cross. It drew flies, and Magdalene kicked dirt over it to keep them away from it. It was much too precious for them.

Mary went first, with the other women behind her, and hastened down into the tombs, but Magdalene paused at the foot of the bloodstained cross, a dismal and lonely sight against shifting skies. It shocked her to find a sprig of white flowers at its base, a plant that had miraculously grown in two days to spread out its white petals against the rough-hewn wood. Their beauty reached into her soul and she lowered her hand to touch them, for they grew from earth saturated in his blood. One last miracle for her to treasure.

“Mary,” she said as the woman came back for her, “look.”

The older woman kneeled, and a smile touched her lips, despite her sorrow. “He always loved lilies even as a child. He would pick these and bring them to me. He tried to make it up to me after he stayed behind in the temple, and his father and I were frantic.” She touches one with her fingertip and lets out a soft sob of remembrance.

Wiping away fresh tears, Magdalene accompanied her down the dusty road into the tombs. The cloying, sour rot of putrefying bodies mingled with the dust and the damp, for there were bodies laid inside the crevasses and further into the caves. It churned her stomach. After a full day in the tomb, Yeshua would bloat and stink. But she would not complain. He deserved better than this fate.

She still could not understand it. Why He had not challenged them or called upon the people to rise in His defense. He had not spoken in His defense, but went to a death none of them expected. He should have been their king, their savior.

And now, He lay dead in a tomb.

A loose pebble slid out from under her and almost made her fall. Would the guards let them into the tomb? The temple had placed them there, fearful one of His followers would break the Sabbath and steal away the body. But when they turned the corner, the men were not there. A few spears lay on the ground. Magdalene stopped in shock to find the massive stone, which took six men to roll into place, rolled to one side. Mary halted and put her hands to her mouth, but Magdalene pushed the jar of ointment she carried into another pair of hands and scrambled inside.-

Yeshua was gone.

Only His burial robes lay inside on the slab, neatly folded with a sprig of hyssop.

The stink of death did not even linger about the tomb. She stumbled out into the haze of early morning and threw up, her stomach heaving with the horror of knowing the Romans had taken him. Where did he lay? Where might they wash and tend to him? Where could they return to worship?

She stumbled back to the house where they stayed and shook Simon Peter awake. Sobbing, she told him what she saw, and he and several of the others returned with her to the tomb. He ran inside, let out an anguished howl, and came out with tears in his eyes. Magdalene sank onto the ground, clutching herself while the others argued. Maybe if they went to Pilate, he would return to them the body. Or they could appeal to someone within the Sanhedrin. Shaken, their footsteps fell away and even Mary went with them, though she hesitated and waited for Magdalene to move. She didn’t.

Silence crept in with their absence. One that slipped its tendrils into her mind and made her uneasy.

She wept until she had no more salt in her tears, then wiped her face and rose to her feet. At least she could leave the jar of spikenard, worth a year’s wages, but she had no need of it now. Her trembling hand fell upon the arch into the tomb, and she stepped within, only for her breath to catch in her throat. Two men sat inside. She had not seen them arrive. Her eyes darted between them, recognizing neither of them. One rested his hand on the folded linen, but the hissop had fallen to the floor. It lay there, a flash of soft lavender petals against the scuffed stone floor.

The tomb seemed to hold its breath.

“Why do you weep?” he asked her.

“They have taken my lord,” she answered, “and I know not where to find him.”

The man gestured for her to look behind her as a shadow fell across the doorway. Magdalene felt a familiar presence, and her breath caught in her throat. She knew that presence. She recognized it. Yeshua. Her chest heaved and her fingers tightened around the little jar of precious burial oil. Clutching it to her waist, she turned and beheld Him.

The same smile. The same warm brown eyes and short hair. Yet different.

But it could not be. She wanted to see him, so she did. She had to be rational. “Please, sir, if it is you who has carried Him away, tell me where you have put Him,” she said through cracked lips.

He ducked His head to enter the tomb and a ribbon of light trailed after her. “It is I, Mary,” he said.

The voice she loved, that had cast out demons and told stories, that thickened with laughter as He teased His disciples, created a warmth in her heart that spread to her fingertips.

His eyes were the same. Gentle, compassionate, and full of joy.

“Mary, there is no need to weep or to mourn,” He said. “For I am here.”

The jar of spikenard slipped from her fingers and shattered at his feet. She fell on her face before him, this time delivered not from demons but from doubt. She stared at the feet she had kissed once before, now marked with a nail hole through each. “Teacher,” she whispered. “Master. Messiah. Lord.”

The same hand fell upon her hooded head. “Go to the others. Tell them what you have seen.”

She did not want to leave him, ever, but nodded. Magdalene emerged into the light outside the tomb, a glorious, radiant cascade of warmth that could not compare with what she had witnessed. It showed her that the lilies had grown up overnight, in every crevasse and along the path from the tombs. Their sweetness filled the air even as faith filled her heart.

No tomb could contain him. Death had claimed him but not held him.

He had not been taken. He had arisen.

About the Author: Charity Bishop writes historical fiction, historical fantasy, and suspense novels that explores the darkness in human hearts, and the light that refuses to be extinguished. Discover her books.