Ultimate

Supernatural Horror

Box Set

Featuring:

Virgin (by F. Paul Wilson)

Haunted House (by J.A. Konrath & Jack Kilborn)

Wolf Hunt (by Jeff Strand)

Eerie (by Blake Crouch and Jordan Crouch)

Speed Dating with the Dead (by Scott Nicholson)

TheFinal Winter (by Iain Rob Wright)

Copyright ©2013 by F. Paul Wilson, J.A. Konrath, Jeff Strand, Blake Crouch, Jordan Crouch, Scott Nicholson, and Wright Ideas Ltd.

VIRGIN

I approached the Essenes at Qumran but they tried to stone me.  I fled further south, wandering the west shore of the sea of Lot.  Perhaps Massada would have me.  Surely they would welcome one of my station.  Or perhaps I would have to push further south to Zohar.  

I do not know where to go.  And I am alone in Creation.

--from the Glass scroll

Rockefeller Museum translation

ELEVEN

The Judean Wilderness

Dan wiped his face on his sleeve as they drove through the barren sandy hills.

“Let’s find a shady spot and take a break.”

“There is no shade,” Carrie said.  “But I’ll drive if you want.”

He peered through the Explorer’s dusty windshield at the undulating landscape shimmering before them.  They’d been wandering through the desert mountains most of the morning, following one wadi, then another, turning this way and that.  Still Dan was unable get a handle on his surroundings.  He’d never seen anything like it.  So barren, so desolate, so close to the sky, so alone.  No wonder the prophets went to the desert to find and talk to their God—this was a place devoid of earthly distractions.

Except, perhaps, survival.

“No.  Better if I drive and you navigate.”

“Okay.  But we’re going to find it soon.  It’s somewhere up ahead, I just know it.”

“How can you possibly know it?”

She looked at him.  Her face was flushed, just like it got in the shelter kitchen, but her eyes were brighter and more exited than he could remember.

“I can feel it.  Can’t you?”

Dan shrugged.  The only thing he felt was hot.

The air conditioner had given out somewhere around Enot Qane and they’d been sweltering ever since.  At least Dan had.  Not Carrie.  The heat didn’t seem to affect her.  Or perhaps she was too excited to notice.

Carrie had changed.  She’d always been driven, and her boundless energies had been focused on keeping St. Joe’s homeless kitchen operating at peak efficiency, doing as much as possible for as many as possible.  But her focus had shifted since that evening when she discovered the translation of the forged scroll.  She’d become obsessed with finding this so-called Resting Place.

Nothing would turn her from the quest.  Dan had argued with her, pleaded with her, tried to reason with her that she was falling victim to an elaborate hoax.  He threatened to make her go alone, even threatened to expose to Mother Superior the true reason for the leave of absence she’d requested this summer.

Carrie had only smiled.  “I’m going, Dan.  With you or without you, whether Mother Superior knows or not, I’m going to Israel this summer.”

For a while he’d hoped that money, or rather the lack of it, would keep her home.  Neither of them had any savings—their vows of poverty saw to that—and this pipe-dream trip of Carrie’s was going to be costly.  But money turned out to be no problem at all.  Her brother Brad had seen to that years ago when he’d presented her with an American Express card in her name but drawn on his account.  Keep it handy in case of an emergency, he’d told her.  Or use it to buy whatever you need whenever you need it.

Carrie had filed it away, literally forgetting about it until she decided that she needed two tickets to Israel.  She said Brad wouldn’t mind.  He had deep pockets and was always trying to buy her things...trying to assuage his guilt, she’d said, although she wouldn’t say what kind of guilt he was assuaging.

And so it came to pass that a certain Ms. Carolyn Ferris and a male companion arrived in Tel Aviv at the height of the summer, hopped a tour bus to Jerusalem where they spent two nights in the Hilton, toured the Old Town for a day, then rented a four-wheel-drive, off-road vehicle, stocked it with a couple of flashlights, a cooler filled with sandwiches and soft drinks, and headed south.

And now here they were, trekking through the Judean Wilderness—the Midbar Yehuda of yore—in a Ford Explorer on a wild goose chase.  Carrie’s wild goose chase.  And that was why Dan was along.

Weren’t you supposed to protect the one you loved from harm, from the pain of dashed hopes at the end of wild goose chases?

Well, even though Dan knew this quest of hers was a hoax, the trip wasn’t a total loss.  They’d seen the Holy Land.  During their day in Jerusalem they’d walked the Via Dolorosa—the original Stations of the Cross—and visited the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Garden of Gesthemane, and the Pater Noster Church on the Mount of Olives.

Through it all, Carrie had been so excited, like a child on her first trip to Disney World.  “We’re really here!” she’d kept saying.  “I can’t believe we’re really here!”

And all along the Via Dolorosa: “Can you believe it, Dan?  We’re actually walking in Jesus’s footsteps!”

That look on her face was worth anything.  Anything except...

He glanced over at her, sitting in the passenger seat, scanning the cliffs ahead as the Explorer bounced up the dry drainage channel.  A yellow sheet of paper sat in her lap.  Dan had drawn a large tav on it—the Hebrew equivalent of the letter T, or Th.  Carrie was hunting for a cliff or butte in the shape of that tav.  Dan doubted very much they’d find one, but even if they did, there’d be no Virgin Mary hidden in a cave there.

And that worried him.  He didn’t want to see Carrie hurt.  She’d invested so much of herself in this quest, allowed it to consume her for months to the point where there was no telling what the painful truth might do to her.  Let them spend their entire time here driving in endless circles, finding nothing, then heading home disappointed and frustrated that the desert had kept its secret, but leaving still alive the hope that somewhere in this seared nothingness there remained the find of the millennium, guarded by time and place, perhaps even by God Himself.  Better that than to see her crushed by the realization that she’d been duped.

Ahead of him, the wadi forked into two narrower channels, one running northwest, the other southwest.  The trailing cloud of dust swirled around them as Dan braked to a halt.  He coughed as some of it billowed through the open windows.

“Where to now?”

“I’m not sure,” Carrie said.

Without waiting for the dust to settle, she stepped out and stared at the cliffs rising ahead of them.  Dan got out, too, as much to stretch his legs as to look around.  A breeze drifted by, taking some of his perspiration with it.

“You know,” he said, “I do believe it’s gotten cooler.”

“We’re finally above sea level,” Carrie said, still staring ahead as if expecting to find a road sign to the tav cliff.  The light blue short-sleeve shirt she wore had dark rings of perspiration around her armpits and across her shoulder blades where they’d rested against the seat back.  Her loose, lightweight slacks fluttered around her legs.  She stood defiantly in the sun, unbowed by the heat.

Dan looked back the way they’d come.  Rolling hills, dry, sandy brown, almost yellow, falling away to the Dead Sea, the lowest spot on earth—the world’s navel, someone had called it.  The hazy air had been unbearably thick down there, chokingly laden with moisture from the evaporating sea; leaden air, too heavy to escape the fifty-mile trench in which it was trapped.  Maybe it wasn’t cooler up here, but it was drier.  He could breathe.

Above, the sky was a flawless turquoise.  The land ahead was as dry and yellow-brown and barren as behind, but steeper here, angling up sharply toward a phalanx of cliffs.  Looked like a dead end up there.

He plucked a rag from the floor by the front seat and began wiping the dust from the windshield.

“When’s the next rain?” he said.

“November, most likely.”

Dan had to smile.  Carrie had done her homework.  She’d spent months preparing for this trip, studying the scroll translation and correlating its scant geographical details with present day topographical maps of the area.  He bet she knew more about the region than most Israelis, but that probably wasn’t saying much.  They hadn’t seen another soul since turning off the highway.  They were completely alone up here.  The realization gave Dan a twinge of uneasiness.  They hadn’t thought to rent a phone—not that there’d be a cell out here anyway—and if they broke down, they’d have to start walking.  And if they got lost...

“We’re not lost, are we?” Dan said.

“I don’t think so.  I’m sure he came this way.”

How could she be certain?  Sure, she’d put a lot of research into this trip, but there hadn’t been much to go on to begin with.  All they knew was that the fictional author of the scroll—”fictional” was an adjective Dan used privately when referring to the author; never within Carrie’s hearing—had turned west from his southward trek and left the shore of what he called the Sea of Lot to journey into the wilderness.

But where had he turned?

“I don’t know, Carrie...”

“This has to be the way.  “She seemed utterly convinced.  Didn’t she have even a shade of a doubt?  “Look: He mentioned being driven out of Qumran—that’s at the northern end of the sea.  He says he headed south toward Masada and Zohar but he never mentions getting there.  He doesn’t even mention passing En Gedi which was a major Oasis even then.  So he must have turned into the wilderness somewhere between Qumran and En Gedi.”

“No argument there.  But that stretch is more than thirty miles long.  There were hundreds of places we could have turned off the road.  Why did you pick that particular spot  back there?”

Carrie looked at him and her clear blue eyes clouded momentarily.  For the first time since their arrival she seemed unsure of herself.

“I don’t know,” she said slowly.  “It just seemed like the right place to turn.  I’ve read the translation so many times I feel as if I know him.  I could almost see him wandering south, alone, depressed, suddenly feeling it was no use trying to find other people to take him in, that he was unfit for human company, and turning and heading into the hills.”

Dan was struck by the thought that she might be describing her own feelings as a fourteen-year old entering the Convent of the Blessed Virgin.

That moment back on the highway had been kind of spooky.  They’d been cruising south on Route 90 along the Dead Sea shore when Carrie had suddenly clutched his arm and pointed to a rubble-strewn path, little more than a goat trail, breaking through the roadside brush and winding up into the hills.

“There!  Follow that!”

So Dan had followed.

“Which way does it seem we should go now?” he said and knew right away from her expression that it hadn’t come out the way he’d meant it.

Her eyes flashed.  “Look, Dan.  I know you think I’ve gone off the deep end on this, but it’s important to me.  And if—”

“What’s important to me is you, Carrie.  That’s all.  Just you.  And I’m worried about you getting hurt.  You’ve pumped your expectations so high...”

Her eyes softened as she challenged the sun with that smile.  “You don’t have to worry about me, Dan, because she is up here.  And we’re going to find her.”

“Carrie...”

“And now that I think about it, it seems we should take the south fork.”  She swung back into her seat and closed her door.  “Come on, Driver Dan.  Let’s go!  Time’s a-wastin’!”

Dan sighed.  Nothing to do but humor her.  And it wasn’t so bad, really.  At least they were together.

‡

Almost four o’clock.  Dan was thinking about calling it a day and heading back to the highway while there was still plenty of light left.  Wouldn’t be easy finding his way back down in the light.  No way in the dark.  He was just about to suggest it when Carrie suddenly lurched forward in her seat.

“Oh, my God!” she cried, her eyes darting between the windshield and the sheet of paper in her lap.  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, could that be it?”

Dan skidded to a halt and craned his neck over the steering wheel for a look.  As before, the trailing dust cloud caught up to them and he could see nothing while they were engulfed.  But as it cleared...

“I’ll be damned,” he muttered.

No, he thought.  It’s got to be a mistake.  The sun is directly ahead, it’s glancing off the dirt on the windshield.  A trick of the light.  Got to be.

Hoping, praying that his eyes were suffering from too much glare, Dan opened the door and stepped out for a better look.  He shielded his eyes against the sun peeking over the flat ledge atop a huge outcropping of stone ahead of them, and blinked into the light.  He still couldn’t tell if it—

And then the sun dipped below the ledge, silhouetting the outcropping in brilliant light.  Suddenly Dan could see that the ledge ran rightward to merge with the wall of the mountain of which the outcropping was a part, and leftward to a rocky lip that overhung a sheer precipice bellying gently outward about halfway down its fall.

Damned if it didn’t look just like a...tav.

“Do you see it, Dan?”

He glanced right.  Carrie was out of the cab, holding the yellow sheet of paper at arms length before her and jumping up and down like a pre-schooler who’d just spotted Barney.

He hesitated, unsure of what to say.  As much as he wanted to avoid reinforcing her fantasies, he could not deny the resemblance of the cliff face to the Hebrew letter he’d drawn for her.

“Well, I see something that might remotely—”

“Remotely, shlemotely!  That cliff looks exactly like what you drew here, which is exactly the way it was described in the scroll!”

“The forged scroll, Carrie.  Don’t forget that the source of all these factoids is a confirmed hoax.”

“How could I possibly forget when you keep reminding me every ten minutes?”

He hated to sound like a broken record, but he felt he had to keep the facts before her.  The scroll and everything in it was bogus.  And truthfully, right now he needed a little reminder himself.  Because finding the tav rock had shaken him up more than he wished to admit.

“Sorry, Carrie.  I just...”

“I know.  But you’ve got to believe, Dan.  There’s truth in that scroll.”  She pointed at the tav rock looming before them.  “Look.  We’re not imagining that.  It’s there.”

Dan wanted to say, Yes, but if you want to perpetrate a hoax, you salt the lies with neutral truths, and the most easily verifiable neutral truths are simple geological formations.  But he held his tongue.  This was Carrie’s show.

“What are we waiting for?” she said

Dan shrugged and got back in behind the wheel.  The incline ahead was extra steep so he shifted into super low.

“Can you believe it?” Carrie said, bubbling with excitement as they started the final climb.  “We’re traveling the same route as Saint James and the members of the Jerusalem Church when they carried Mary’s body here.”

“No, Carrie,” he said softly.  “I can’t believe it.  I want to believe it.  I’d give almost anything to have it be true.  But I can’t believe it.”

She smiled that smile.  “You will, Danny, me boy-o.  Before the day is out, you will.”

‡

The closer they got to the rock, the less and less it resembled a tav...and the more formidable it looked.  Fifty feet high at the very least, with sheer walls that would have challenged an experienced rock climber even if they went straight up; but the outward bulge and the sharp overhang at the crest made ascent all but impossible.

As they rounded the outcropping, Dan realized they’d entered the mouth of a canyon.  The deep passage narrowed and curved off to the left about a quarter of a mile north.  He stopped the Explorer in the middle of the dry wadi running along the eastern wall.  Cooler here.  The canyon floor had been resting in the shadow of its western wall for a while.  To his left he spotted a cluster of stunted trees.

“Aren’t those fig trees?” Carrie said.

“Not sure.  Could be.  Whatever they are, they don’t look too healthy.”

“They look old.  Old fig trees... didn’t the scroll writer said he was subsisting on locusts, honey, and wild figs?”

“Yeah, but those trees don’t look wild.  Looks like somebody planted them there.”

“Exactly!” Carrie said, grinning.

Dan had to admit—to himself only—that she had a point.  It looked as if someone had moved a bunch of wild fig trees to this spot and started a makeshift grove...out here...in the middle of nowhere.

But that only meant the forger of the scroll had to have been here in order to describe it; it didn’t mean St. James had been here, or that the Virgin Mary was hidden away atop the tav rock.

But a big question still remained: Who had planted those fig trees?

He turned to Carrie but her seat was empty.  She was walking across the wadi toward the tav rock.  Dan turned off the motor and ran around to catch up to her.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Looking for a way up.”  She was studying the cliff face as she walked.  “The scroll says there’s a path.”

Dan scanned the steep wall looming before them.

“Good luck.”

“Well, this isn’t nearly as smooth as the far side.  There could be a way up.  There must be.  We simply have to find it.”

Dan saw countless jagged cracks and mini-ledges protruding randomly from the surface, but nothing that even vaguely resembled a path.  This looked hopeless, but the scroll had been accurate on so many other points already, there just might be a path to the top.

He veered off to the left.

“Giving up so soon?” Carrie said.

“If there is a path,” he said, “you won’t spot it from straight on.  It’ll only be visible from a sharp angle.  You didn’t spot one as we rounded the front of the cliff, so let’s see what things look like from the back end.”

She nodded, smiling.  “Smart.  I knew I loved you for some reason.”

Dan figured he’d done enough nay-saying.  The only way to get this over with was to find a path to the top—if one existed—and convince Carrie once and for all that there was no cave up there and that the Virgin Mary was not lying on a bier inside waiting to be discovered.  Then maybe they could get their lives back to normal—that is, as normal as life could be for a priest and a nun who were lovers.

He reached the northern end of the outcropping and wound his way through the brush clustered around its base.  When he was within arms reach of the base itself, he looked south along the cliff wall.

“I’ll be damned...”

Carrie hurried to his side.  “What?  Did you find it?  Is it there?”

He guided her in front of him and pointed ahead.  Starting a dozen feet behind them and running up the face of the cliff at a thirty-degree angle was a narrow, broken, jagged ledge.  It averaged only two feet or so in width.

Carrie whirled and hugged him.  “That’s it!  You found it!  See?  All you need is a little faith!”  She grabbed his hand and began dragging him from the brush.  “Let’s go!”

He followed her at a walk as she ran back to where the ledge slanted into the floor of the canyon floor.  By the time he reached it she was already on her way, scrabbling upward along the narrow shelf like a lithe, graceful cat.

“Slow down, Carrie.”

“Speed up, slowpoke!” she laughed.

She’s going to kill herself, he thought as he began his own upward course along the ledge.  He glanced down at the jagged rubble on the hard floor of the wadi below and quickly pulled his gaze away.  Maybe we’re both going to get killed.

He wasn’t good with heights—not phobic about them, but not the least bit fond of them.  He concentrated on staying on the ledge.  Shale, sand, and gravel littered the narrow, uneven surface before him, tilting toward the cliff wall for half a dozen feet or so, then a crack or a narrow gap, or a step up or down, then it continued upward, now sloping away from the wall.  These away sections were the worse.  Dan’s sneakers tended to slip on the sand and he had visions of himself sliding off into—

“Dan!”

A high-pitched squeal of terror from up ahead.  He looked up and saw Carrie down on one knee, her right leg dangling over the edge, her fingers clawing at the cliff wall for purchase.  She’d climbed back into the sunlight and it looked as if her sharp-edged shadow was trying to push her off.

Dear God!

“Carrie!  Hang on!”

He hurried toward her as quickly as he dared but she was back on the ledge and on her feet again by the time he reached her.

“What happened?”

Pale, panting, she leaned against the cliff wall, hugging it.  “I slipped, but I’m okay.”

Suddenly he was angry.  His heart was pounding, his hands were trembling...

“You almost killed yourself, dammit!”

“Sorry,” she said softly.  “That wasn’t my intention, I assure you.”

“Just slow down, will you?  I don’t want to lose you.”

That smile.  “That’s nice to hear.”

“Here.  Let me slide past you and I’ll lead the way.”

“Not a chance.  I’ll take my time from here on up.”  She held up two fingers.  “Promise.”

Carrie kept her word, taking it slow, watching her footing, with Dan close behind.  They reached the sunlit summit without another mishap.  He glanced around—no one else here, and no place to hide.

“Oh, Lord,” Carrie said, wandering across the top of the tav toward the far edge.  “Look at this!”

Dan caught up to her and put an arm around her shoulders, as much from a need to touch her as to stop her from getting too close to the edge.  The sun cooked their backs while the desert wind dried the sweat from the climb, and before them stretched the eastern expanse of the Midbar Yehuda, all hills and mounds and shadowed crags, looking like a rumpled yellow-brown blanket after a night of passion, sloping down to where a sliver of the Dead Sea was visible, sparkling in the late afternoon sun.

Breathtaking, Dan thought.  This almost makes the whole wild goose chase worthwhile.

Together they turned from the vista and scanned the mini-plateau atop the tav.  It ran two hundred feet from the front lip to the rear wall, and was perhaps a hundred and fifty feet wide.  And against that rear wall, to the left of center, lay a pile of rocks.

Carrie grabbed his upper arm.  He felt her fingers sink into his biceps as she pointed to the rocks.

“Oh, God, Dan!  There it is!”

“Just some rocks, Carrie.  Doesn’t mean—”

“She’s there, Dan.  We’ve found her!  We’ve found her!”

She broke from him and dashed across the plateau.  Dan hurried after her.

Here it comes, he thought.  Here’s where the roof falls in on Carrie’s quest.

By the time he reached the pile, Carrie was on it, scrambling to the top.  The jumble stood about eight feet high and she was already at work pulling at the uppermost rocks to dislodge them.

“Easy, Carrie.”  Dan climbed to her side and joined her atop the pile.  “The last thing we need is for you to slip and sprain an ankle.  I have no idea how I’d get you back down.”

“Help me,” Carrie said, breathless with excitement.  “She’s just a few feet away.  We’re almost there!  I can feel it!”

Dan joined her in dislodging the uppermost rocks and letting them roll to the base.  The first were on the small side, cantaloupe sized and easy to move.  But they quickly graduated to watermelons.

Carrie groaned as she strained against one of the larger stones.  “I can’t budge this.  Give me a hand, will you?”

Dan got a grip on the edge of the rock and put his back into it and together they got it overbalanced to the point where it tumbled down the pile.

Dan saw even bigger stones below.

“We’re going to need help,” he said, panting and straightening up.  The sun was still actively baking the top of the tav rock and he was drenched.  “A lever of some sort.  We’ll never move those lower rocks by ourselves.  Maybe I can find a tree limb or something we can use to—”

“We’ve got to get in!”  Tears of frustration welled in her eyes as she looked up at him.  “We can’t stop now.  Not when we’re this close.  We can’t let a bunch of lousy rocks keep us out when we’re so close!”

With the last word she kicked at one of the larger stones directly below her—and cried out in alarm as it gave way beneath her.  Dan grabbed her outflung hand and almost lost his own footing as the entire pile shuddered and settled under them with a rumble and a gush of dust.

“You all right?” Dan said, pulling her closer.

She coughed.  “I think so.  What happened?”

“I’m not sure.”  The dust was settling, layering their skin, mixing with their sweat.  Even with mud on her face Carrie was beautiful.  Over her shoulder, down by Carrie’s feet, Dan saw a dark crescent in the mountain wall.  “Oh, Jesus.”

Carrie turned and gasped.  “The cave!”

Maybe, Dan thought.  Maybe not.  The only sure thing about it is it’s a hole in the wall.

But he knew it was the upper rim of a cave mouth.  Had to be.  Everything else in this elaborate scam had followed true to the forged scroll.  Why not the cave too?

But what sort of ugly surprise waited within?

Before he could stop her, Carrie had dropped prone and pushed her face into the opening.

“We left the flashlights in the car,” she was saying.  “And I can’t see a thing.”

Quickly he pulled her back.  “Are you nuts?”

“What’s the matter?”

“You don’t know what’s in there.”

“What could be in there?”

“How about snakes or scorpions?  Or how about bats?  It’s a cave, you know.”

“I know that, but—”

“But nothing.”  He pulled her to her feet.  “You keep your nose out of there while I go get the flashlights.”

“All right,” she said reluctantly as she allowed him to guide her down to the bottom of the pile.  “Can’t see anything anyway.”

“Precisely.  So you just wait here while I go back to the Explorer.”

“Okay, but hurry.”  She squeezed his hand.  “Don’t hurry so much you fall, but hurry.”

Dan made the round trip as quickly as he could, hugging the cliff wall all the way, concentrating on the path and not looking down.  He did spot another cave in the far wall of the canyon—probably where the fictional author of the scrolls supposedly had lived.  He reminded himself to check it out before they left.

The sun had continued its slide and the shadow of the canyon’s western wall had crawled three-quarters of the way up the tav by the time he returned to the top with the two flashlights.

He stood there a moment, panting, sweating from the climb, before he realized he was alone on the plateau.

“Carrie?”  He dashed toward the rock pile, shouting as he ran.  “Carrie!”

“What?”

Her head popped up atop the rock pile, smiling at him, and as he clambered up the boulders he saw her lying on her belly with her legs and pelvis inside the opening.  She looked like someone half-swallowed by a stony mouth.

“My God, Carrie, couldn’t you wait?  Get out of there!”

“I’m fine.”  She reached a hand out to him.  “Flashlight please.”

“I’ll go first.”

“No way.  You didn’t even want to come.”

Dan was tempted to withhold the flashlight, make her climb out of there and let him shine a beam around inside before she crawled in.  But the excitement, the child-like eagerness in her eyes weakened him.  And after all, this was her show.

He flicked one on to make sure it worked, then slapped the handle into her waiting palm.

“Be careful.  And wait right there.  Don’t go anywhere without me.”

“Okay.”

Another smile, so confident looking, but Dan noticed the flashlight shaking in her hand.  She pushed herself backward and slipped the rest of the way inside.

A chill of foreboding ran through him as he saw her disappear into that hole, swallowed by the darkness.  God knew what could be in there.

“Carrie?  You there?  You okay?”

Her face floated back into the light.  “Of course I’m okay.  Kind of cool in here, and dusty, and it looks...empty.”

I could have told you that, Dan thought, but kept it to himself.  He’d give anything to make this right for her, but that was impossible.  So the least he could do was be there when the hurt hit.

“Stand back a little.  I’m coming in.”

Dan slid down onto his back and entered the opening feet first.  A tight squeeze but he managed to wriggle through with only a few minor scrapes and scratches.

Carrie stood a few feet away, her back to him, playing her flashlight beam along the walls.

“You’re right,” he said, coughing as he brushed himself off.  “A lot cooler in here.  Almost cold.”

Quickly he flashed his own beam around.  Not a cave so much as a rocky alcove, maybe a dozen feet deep and fifteen wide, with rough, pocked walls.  And no doubt about its being empty.  Not even a spider.  Just dust—dry, powdered rock—layering the floor.  Only Carrie’s footprints and his own marred the silky surface.

What do I say? he wondered.  Do I say anything—or let Carrie say it first?

As he stepped toward her, Carrie suddenly moved away to the left.

“Look.  I think there’s a tunnel here.”

Dan caught up to her, joined his flash beam to hers, and realized that what he had thought to be a pocket recess near the floor of the cave was actually an opening into another chamber.

Carrie dropped to her hands and knees and shone her light through.

“See anything?” Dan said, hovering over her.

“Looks like more of the same.  Tunnel’s only a couple of feet long.  I’m going in for a look.”

Dan squatted behind her and gently patted her buttocks.  “Right behind you.”

Carrie began to crawl, then stopped, freezing like a deer who’s heard a twig break, then quickly scrambled the rest of the way through.

“Oh, Dan,” he heard her say in a hoarse, quavering  voice just above a whisper.  “Oh-Dan-oh-Dan-oh-Dan-oh-Dan!”

He belly-crawled through as fast as his elbows and knees could propel him and bumped his head on the ceiling as he regained his feet on the other side.

But he instantly forgot the pain when he saw what lay in the wavering beam of Carrie’s flashlight.

A woman.

An elderly woman lying supine in an oblong niche in the wall of the chamber.

“It’s...” Carrie’s voice choked off and she cleared her throat.  “It’s her, Dan.  It’s really her.”

“Well, it’s somebody.”

A jumble of emotions tumbled through Dan.  He was numb, he was exhausted, and he was angry.  He’d been preparing himself to comfort Carrie when she discovered she’d been played for a fool.  Entering the cave was supposed to be the last step in this trek.  Now he had one more thing to explain.

The scroll, the careful and clever descriptions of this area of the Wilderness were one thing, but this was going too far.  This was...ghoulish was the most appropriate word that came to mind.

“It’s her.  Look at her.”

Dan was doing just that.  The woman’s robe was blue, its cowl up and around her head; short, medium build, with thick strands of gray hair poking out from under the cowl.  Her wrinkled skin had a sallow, almost waxy look to it.  Her eyes and lips were closed, her cheeks slightly sunken, her nose generous without being large.  Even in the wavering light of the flash beams, she appeared to be a handsome, elderly woman who might have been beautiful in her youth.  She looked so peaceful lying there.  He noticed her hands were folded between her breasts.  Something about those hands...

“Look at her fingernails,” Carrie said, her voice hushed like someone whispering during Benediction.  Obviously she shared his feeling that they were trespassing.  “They’re so long.”

“I hear they continue to grow...the nails and the hair... after you’re dead.”

Carrie stepped closer but Dan gripped her arm and held her back.

“Don’t.  It might be booby-trapped.”

Carrie shook off his hand and whirled to face him.  He couldn’t see her face but the anger in her whisper told him all he needed to know about her expression.

“Stop it, Dan!  Haven’t you gone far enough with this Doubting Thomas act?”

“It’s not an act, and I wish there was more light.”

“So do I, but there isn’t.  I wish we’d brought some sort of lantern but we didn’t.  This is all we’ve got.”

“All right.  But be careful.”

Dan fought a sick, anxious dread that coiled through his gut as he watched her approach the body.  And it was a body.  Had to be.  Too much detail for it to be anything other than the real thing.

But whose body?  What sort of mind would go to such elaborate extremes to pull off a hoax.  A sicko like that would be capable of anything, even a booby trap.

Of course, there was the possibility that these actually were the earthly remains of the mother of Jesus Christ.

Dan wanted to believe that.  He dearly would have loved to believe that.  And probably would be fervently believing that right now if not for the fact that the scroll that had led them here had been proven beyond a doubt to have been written less than a dozen years ago.

So if this wasn’t the Virgin Mary, who was she?  And who had hidden her here?

Carrie was standing over her now, staring down at the woman’s lifeless face.

“Dan?  Do you notice something strange about her?”

“Besides her fingernails?”

“There’s no dust on her.  There’s dust layered everywhere, but not a speck of it on her.”

Dan stepped closer and sniffed.  No odor.  And Carrie was right about the dust: not a speck.  He smiled.  The forger had finally made a mistake.

“Doesn’t that indicate to you that she was placed here recently?”

“No.  It indicates to me that dirt—and dust is dirt—has no place on the Mother of God.”

As he watched, Carrie sank to her knees, made the sign of the cross, and bowed her head in prayer with the flashlight clasped between her hands.

This isn’t real, Dan thought.  All we need is a ray of light from the ceiling and a hallelujah chorus from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to make this a Cecil B. DeMille epic.  This can’t be happening.  Not to me.  Not to Carrie.  We’re two sane people.

Impulsively, gingerly, he reached out and touched the woman’s cheek.  The wrinkled flesh didn’t give.  Not hard like stone or wood or plastic.  More like wax.  Cool and smooth...like wax.  But it wasn’t wax, at least not like any wax Dan had ever seen.

He heard a sob and snatched his hand away...but the sound had come from Carrie.  He flashed his beam toward her face.  Tears glistened on her cheeks.  He crouched beside her.

“Carrie, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.  I feel so strange.  All this time I thought I believed, and I prayed to her, and I asked her to help me, to intercede for me, but now I get the feeling that all that time I didn’t believe.  Not really.  And now here she is in front of me, not two feet away, and I don’t know what I feel or what I think.”  She looked up at him.  “I don’t have to believe anymore, do I, Dan?  I know.  I don’t have to believe, and that feels so strange.”

One thing Dan knew was that he didn’t believe this was the Virgin Mary.  But it was somebody.  He played his flashlight beam over her body.

Lady, who are you?

Another thing he knew was that Carrie was heading for some sort of breakdown.  She was teetering on the edge now.  He had to get her out of here before she went over.  But how?

“What do we do now?” he said, straightening up.

He felt her grip his arm as she rose to her feet beside him.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean we’ve found her...or someone...or something.  Now what do we do?”

“We protect her, Dan.”

“And how do we do that?”

Carrie’s voice was very calm, almost matter of fact.  “We take her back with us.”

TWELVE

Tel Aviv

“What’s the matter, baby?” Devorah said from behind him, casually raking her sharp nails down the center of his back.

Kesev sat on the edge of the bed in her apartment.  They always wound up at Devorah’s place, never his.  They both preferred it that way.  Kesev because he never allowed anyone in his apartment, and Devorah because when she was home she had access to her...props.

He’d met her last year.  An El Al stewardess.  She could have been Irish with her billowing red hair, pale freckled skin, and blue eyes, but she was pure Israeli.  Young—mid-twenties—with such an innocent, girlish face, almost child-like.  But Devorah was a cruel, mischievous child who liked to play rough.  And when it came to rough she preferred to give rather than receive.  Which was fine with Kesev.

Their little arrangement had lasted longer than any other in recent memory.  Probably because her job took her away so much, she’d yet to grow tired of his black moods and long silences.  And probably because Devorah had been unable to find a way to really hurt him.  Kesev absorbed whatever she could dish out.  She considered him a challenge, her perfect whipping boy.

So Devorah seemed happy with him, while he was...what?  Happy?  Satisfied?  Content?

Hardly.  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt something approaching any of those.

The situation was...tolerable.  Just barely tolerable.  Which was more than he’d learned to hope for.

“You weren’t really into it tonight,” she said.

“Sorry.  I...I’m distracted.”

“You’re always distracted.  Tonight you’re barely here.”

Probably true.  A vague uneasiness had stalked him all day, disturbing his concentration at the Shin Bet office, stealing his appetite, and finally settling on him like a shroud late this afternoon.

More than uneasiness now.  A feeling of impending doom.

Could it have something to do with the Resting Place?  He followed the wire services meticulously and there’d been no word of a new Dead Sea scroll or startling revelations regarding the mother of Christ.  Not even a ripple.

But that was hardly proof that all was well, that all was safe and secure.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to cancel our date for tomorrow,” he said, turning to face her.

She lay sprawled among the sheets, her generous breasts and their pink nipples exposed.  Even her breasts were freckled.  But she didn’t lay still long.  She levered up and slapped him across the face.

“I don’t like broken promises!” she hissed between clenched teeth.

The blow stung but Kesev didn’t flinch.  Nor was he angry.  One deserved whatever one got when a promise was betrayed.

“There is a hierarchy of promises,” he said softly.  “Some promises take precedence over others.”

“And this promise.  Is this what distracts you?”

“Yes.”

“Does it involve another woman?”

“Not at all.”  At least not in the sense she meant.

“Good.”  She smiled as she clicked a handcuff over his right wrist.  “Come.  Let Devorah see if she can make you forget all your mysterious distractions.”

‡

The Judean Wilderness

It had taken some heavy persuasion, but Dan managed to convince Carrie to leave the cave so they could talk outside...in the light...in the air...away from that...thing.

He felt instantly better outside.  It had seemed like night in there.  Even though the entire tav rock was in shadow now, he squinted in the relative brightness.

And he was still staggering from Carrie’s words.  He’d never thought they’d find anything on this trip, so he’d never even dreamed that Carrie might want to...

“Take her back?  To the US?  Are you serious?”

“We have to,” she said.  “If we don’t, other people might decipher that other scroll you mentioned and find her.  The wrong kind of people.  People who’d...misuse her.”

“Then why don’t we just move her from here and bury her where no one will find her?”

She wheeled on him.  “This is the mother of God, Dan!  You don’t just stick her in the dirt!”

“All right, all right.”  He could see she wasn’t rational on this.  “But even if we could get her back home—and believe me, that’s a big if—what’ll we do with her?  Give her to a museum?  To the Vatican?”

“Oh, no.  Oh, Lord, no,” she said, vigorously shaking her head.  “We’ve got to keep her secret.  She was hidden away for a reason.  We have to respect that.  Imagine if some crazy Muslims got hold of her, or some sort of satanic cult.  Think how they might desecrate her.  Now that we’ve found her, we have a very clear duty: We have to take her back with us and hide her where no one else can find her.”

“You’re not thinking, Carrie.  We’ll never get her past customs.”

“There’s got to be a way.  Your friend Hal says people are smuggling archeological artifacts out of the Mid East all the time.  Call him.  He can tell you how.”

“Call Hal?  Sure.  Hand me the phone.”

“This is not a joking matter, Dan.”

He saw her tight features and the look in her eyes and realized how serious she was.  But she wasn’t thinking straight.  Finding that strange body in there, whoever it was, had jumbled up her rational processes.  He had to get her away from here, get her calmed down so she could get some perspective on this whole situation...

And calling Hal might be just the excuse he needed.

“All right.  We’ll call Hal and see what he says.”

Her expression relaxed.  “You mean that?”

“Of course.  We’ll drive back to the highway, maybe go to En Gedi...”  He glanced at his watch.  “It’s seven hours earlier in New York so we can still catch him in his office.  And we’ll ask his advice.”

“You go.  I’m staying here.”

“No way, Carrie.  No way I’m leaving you sitting up here at night in the middle of nowhere.”

“I’ll be all right.  Now that I’ve found her, you can’t expect me to leave her.”

“If she is who you think she is, she’s been fine here for two thousand years.  One more night isn’t going to matter.”

“I’m staying.”

Dan had humored her as far as he could.  He wasn’t backing down on this point.

“Here’s the deal, Carrie,” he said, fighting to keep from shouting.  “Either we go down to En Gedi together or we stay up here and starve together.  But under no circumstances am I leaving you alone.  So it’s up to you.  You decide.  And make it quick.  Because when night falls, we’re stuck here—I won’t be able to find my way back to the highway in the dark.”

They went round and round until she finally agreed to accompany him to En Gedi in return for a promise to come straight back to the tav at first light.

The downhill trip going was shorter by hours than the uphill trip coming, but it seemed much longer.  Carrie hardly spoke a word the whole way.

‡

En Gedi

They lay side by side in their double bed in the local guest house.  Dan’s arms and legs were leaden with fatigue as he floated in a fog of exhaustion.  Here they were, in bed together in one of the world’s most ancient resorts, a green oasis of grasses, vineyards, palm trees, and even a waterfall in the midst of the barren wastelands.  A beauty spot, a lovers’ rendezvous, mentioned even in the ancient Song of Solomon, and all he could think of was sleep.

Not that Carrie would have been receptive to any romantic advances anyway.  She’d seemed more than a bit aloof since they’d left the tav.

That and the knowledge that they’d be returning to the Wilderness tomorrow only heightened Dan’s fatigue.

Hal had been no help.  As soon as they had arrived in En Gedi, Dan called him and explained that they needed a way to get a five-foot-long artifact out of the country.

“Quietly, if you know what I mean.”

Hal had known exactly what he meant and gave him a name and a telephone number in Tel Aviv.  He’d said he was very interested and wanted to see this artifact when it reached the states.  Dan had thanked him and hung up.

Yeah.  Thanks a lot, Hal.

Nothing was working out the way he’d hoped.  He’d expected Hal to tell him to forget it—no way to get something that size past the inspectors.  Instead of no way, it was no problem.

Damn!

Carrie had remained in a sort of semi-dream state.   What little conversation she’d initiated had been whispers of “Can you believe it?  Can you believe we’ve actually found her?” as they stocked up on twine, blankets, work gloves, a pry bar, a lantern, and hundreds of feet of rope.

And now, beside him in bed, after a long silence...

“I’ve been thinking...”

“Great.”  Dan dragged himself back from the borderlands of sleep.  “Does that mean you’re giving up this ca-ca idea of bringing that corpse home?”

“Please don’t refer to her so coarsely.  Please?”

“Okay.  Just for your sake.  Not because I believe it.”

“Thank you.  Now tell me: Who do you think wrote the scroll?”

“A clever, phony bastard.”

“All right,” she said with exaggerated patience.  “Let’s humor Sister Carrie and assume that the scroll is genuine.  Who wrote it?”

“We’ve been over this already.  A Pharisee.  An educated man.”

“But what of that passage where he says ‘I do not fear killing.  I have killed before, slipping through the crowds in Jerusalem, stabbing with my knife.  And I fear not damnation.  Indeed, I am already thrice-damned.’  That doesn’t sound like a Pharisee.”

“What’d you do, memorize that translation?”

“No.  But I’ve read it a few times.”

More than a few, Dan bet.

He said, “Some of the upper-class Israelites, a few Pharisees among them, got involved with the anti-Roman rebels, some with the zealots.  These were a rough bunch of guys, sort of the Israelite equivalent of the IRA.  They mounted guerrilla attacks, they murdered collaborators and informants and generally did whatever they could to incite revolt.  These were the guys who gathered at Masada after the fall of Jerusalem.  They held out for three years, then all 950 of them chose to die rather than surrender to the Roman siege.  This scroll writer is patterned after that sort of zealot.”

“He was a pretty tough cookie then.”

“Extremely.  Not the kind you’d want to cross.”

“I wonder what happened to him?”

“He’s probably hanging around, laughing up his three-striped sleeve, waiting for someone to chase the wild goose he created.”

He regretted the words immediately, but he was tired, dammit.

Carrie yanked the sheet angrily and turned onto her side, her back to him.

“Good night, Dan.  Get some sleep.  We’re out of here at dawn.”

“Good night, Carrie.”

But exhausted as he was, thoughts of the forger kept sleep at bay.  And the more Dan thought about how this slimy bastard had sucked Carrie in, making her believe all this nonsense, the more he wanted to get back at him.

And removing that corpse or whatever it was from its cave was the perfect way.

Then it wouldn’t matter who came searching for the secret atop the tav rock—the New York Times, the Star, or even a mission from Vatican itself—all they’d find was an empty cave.  The tomb is empty!  There’d be no turmoil, no orthodox confusion, no Catechismal chaos.  And the forger would be left scratching his head, wondering where his clever little prop had disappeared to.

Dan smiled into the darkness.  Two can play this game, Mr. Forger.

Tomorrow Carrie would have enthusiastic help in her efforts to smuggle the forger’s prop out of Israel.

After that, Dan would have plenty of time to coax her back to her senses.  If he could.  He was more than a little worried about Carrie’s mental state.  She seemed to be drifting into some religious fantasy realm.  He sensed some strange chemistry between her and that body that he could not begin to comprehend.  A switch had been thrown inside her, but what circuits had been activated?

Maybe it all went back to her childhood.  Maybe it was all tied up in the abuse by her father.  Little Carrie had been a virgin and no one had protected her; now here she was with what she believed to be the Virgin Mary and the grown-up Carrie was going to become the protector.

More parlor psychoanalysis.  But perhaps it gave some clue as to why this artifact was so important to her.

Too important, perhaps.

And that frightened him.  How would she react when it finally became clear—as it must eventually—that the body she thought belonged to the Blessed Virgin was a hoax?  What if she cracked?

Whatever happened, he’d be there for her.

But what if he couldn’t bring her back?

He stared into the darkness and wished Hal had brought him another sort of gift from the Holy Land.  Anything but that damned scroll.

‡

Tel Aviv

Kesev watched the morning news on TV while he sipped his coffee and considered the journey ahead of him.  Oppressed by some nameless sense of urgency, he’d left Devorah’s in the early morning hours, fighting the urge to jump into his car and drive into the Wilderness.

Instead he’d driven home and attempted to sleep.  Wasted hours.  He’d had not a minute of slumber.  He should have driven to the Resting Place.  He’d have been there by now and all these vague fears would be allayed.

He’d called into Shin Bet with an excuse about a family emergency that would keep him from the office all day, but he wondered if this trip were even necessary.  He’d be on the road all day, probably for nothing.  Only 80 air miles, but three times that by car.  And for what?  To satisfy a nameless uneasiness?

Idly, he wondered if he could get a helicopter and do a quick fly-by, but immediately discarded the idea.  He’d made a spectacle of himself back there in ‘91 during the Gulf War when he’d refused to leave the SCUD impact site until all the investigations had been completed.  He’d actually camped out there until the last missile fragment had been removed and the final investigator had returned home.  There’d been too many questions about his undue interest in that particular piece of nowhere.  If he requested a copter now...

He sighed and finished his coffee.  Better get moving.  He had a long drive ahead of him, and he’d know no peace until he’d reassured himself.

Absence...guilt twisted inside of him.  He wasn’t supposed to be away from the Resting Place.  Ever.  He’d promised to stay there and guard it.

He shook off the guilt.  How long could you sit around guarding a place that no one even knew existed?

The Resting Place was as safe as it ever was, protected by the greatest, most steadfast guardian of all—the Midbar Yehuda.

‡

The Judean Wilderness

Carrie held her breath going through the little passage to the second chamber.  But then the beam flashed against the Blessed Mother and she let it out.

“She’s still here!  Oh, thank God, Dan!  She’s still here!”

“What did you expect?” Dan muttered as he crawled in behind her with the electric lantern.  “Not as if we left her on a subway.”

She knew Dan was tired and irritable.  Anyone seeing him stumbling around the guest house this morning would have thought he’d been drinking all night.  Her own back ached and her eyes burned, but true to her word, Carrie had awakened him at first light this morning and had them on the road by the time the sun peeked over the Jordanian highlands on the far side of the Dead Sea.  It had glowed deep red in the rearview mirror as it crept up the flawless sky, stretching the Explorer’s shadow far before them as they bounced and rolled into the hills.

And now as she stood in the chamber, staring down once more at the woman she knew—knew—was the Mother of God, she felt as if her heart would burst inside her.  She loved this woman—for all her quiet courage, for all the pain she must have suffered in silence.  But the Virgin didn’t look quite like what she’d expected.  In her mind’s eye she’d imagined finding a rosy-cheeked teenager, or at the very least a tall, beautiful woman in her early twenties, because that was the way Carrie had always seen her pictured.  But when she thought about it, the Virgin probably had been average height for a Palestinian woman of two thousand years ago, and must have been pushing seventy when she died.

Dizziness swept over Carrie as she was struck again by the full impact of what—who—she had found.  God had touched this woman as He had touched no other human being.  She’d carried the incarnation of His Son.  And now she lay here, not two feet in front of Carrie.

This is really her.  This is the Mother of God.

Until yesterday, the Blessed Virgin had been a statue, a painting, words in books.  Now, looking at her aged face, her glossy, uncorrupted flesh, Carrie appreciated her as a woman.  A human being.  All those years, all those countless Hail Marys, and never once had Carrie realized that this Mary she’d prayed to as an intercessor had once been a flesh-and-blood human being.  That made all the suffering in Mary’s life so much more real.

And rising with the love came a fierce protective urge, almost frightening in its intensity.

No one must touch her.  No one must desecrate or defile her in any way.  No one must use her for anything.  Anything!  The Church itself couldn’t be trusted.  Who knew what even the Vatican might do?  She’d dreamed during the night of the Blessed Mother’s remains on display in St. Peter’s in Rome and it had sickened her.

Mary had given enough already, and Carrie knew it was up to her to see to it that no one demanded any more of her.

Dear Mother, whoever was left to guard you is long since dead and gone.  I’ll take care of you.  I’ll be your protector from now on.

She unfolded the dark blue flannel blankets she had brought.  Dan set the lantern down and helped her spread them out on the floor.  The bright light cast their distorted shadows against the wall where the Virgin lay in her stony niche.

“All right,” she said when the blankets were right.  “Help me move her out.”

She didn’t want anyone else touching the Virgin, not even Dan, but she couldn’t risk lifting her out of that niche on her own.  God forbid she slipped from her grasp and tumbled to the floor.

As Dan approached the Virgin’s upper torso, Carrie waved him back.

“I’ll take this end.  You take her feet.”

Her hands shook as she approached the Virgin.  What was this going to be like, touching her?  She hesitated a moment, then wriggled her fingers under the Virgin’s cloak and cowl, slipping her hands under her neck and the small of her back.  The fabric felt so clean, so new...how could this be two thousand years old?

Unsettled, she glanced to her right.  What did Dan think?  But Dan stood there with his hands under the Virgin’s knees and ankles, expressionless, waiting for her signal.

She suddenly realized that things had changed since yesterday afternoon.  Until then, Dan had been in charge.  Sure, this trip had been her idea, but Dan had made all the flight arrangements, decided where to stay, what car to rent, while she’d done all the research.  But here, in this chamber, in the presence of the Virgin, she was in charge.

“All right,” she said.  “Lift.”

And as she lifted, a knifepoint of doubt pierced Carrie for an instant: So light!  Almost as if she were hollow.  And so stiff.

She brushed the misgivings away.  The Virgin was small, and God had preserved her flesh.  That was why she was so light and stiff.

Carefully they backed up, cradling the Virgin in their arms, then knelt and gently placed her on the blankets.

“Stiff as a board,” Dan said.  “You know, Carrie, I really think—”

Carrie knew what he was going to say and she didn’t want to hear it.

“Please, Dan.  Let’s just wrap her up and move her out as we agreed.”

He stared at her a moment, then shrugged.  “Okay.”

Dan seemed to have had a change of heart overnight.  Last night he’d been dead set against her plan to bring the Virgin back to New York, yet this morning he seemed all for it.  But not because he’d suddenly become a believer in the authenticity of their discovery.  He was still locked into his Doubting Thomas role.

The Virgin’s unnatural lightness and rigidity, plus Dan’s continuing doubts, only fanned her desire to move the Virgin to a safer hiding place.  Even if she fell into the hands of people with the best intentions, they’d want to examine her, test her to verify her authenticity.  They’d scan her, take samples of her hair, skin scrapings, biopsy her, maybe even—God forbid—autopsy her.

No way, Carrie thought as she folded the blankets over the Virgin, wrapping her rigid form in multiple flannel layers.  No way.

Dan helped her tie the blankets in place with the heavy twine they’d bought in En Gedi.  They tied her around the shoulders, waist, thighs, and knees.  With Carrie leading the way, slipping through the little tunnel first and guiding their precious bundle after her, they moved the Virgin into the front chamber, then through the opening at the top of the cave mouth onto the rock pile.

Squinting in the brightness of the mid-morning sun, they carried her to the far edge of the mini-plateau atop the tav.

“I didn’t realize she was this light,” Dan said, “and that gives me an idea on how we can increase our safety factor here.”

“Who’s safety?”

“Our prize’s.”

Carrie couldn’t get over the change in Dan’s attitude.

“I’m all ears.”

‡

Dan’s voice echoed down from atop the tav rock.

“Ready?”

Carrie shielded her eyes with her hand and looked up.  Dan was a silhouette against the bright blue of the sky, standing on the tav’s overhang directly above, waving to her.  She answered with a broad wave of her own.

“Go ahead!”

As Carrie saw the snugly tied-and-wrapped bundle slip over the edge of the lip and start its slow descent toward her, she became unaccountably afraid.  Everything was set—she’d moved the Explorer under the lip just as Dan had suggested, and here she was, ready to guide the Virgin into the vehicle when she was lowered to within reach—but she could not escape the felling that something was about to go wrong.

She should have stayed with Dan.  Two sets of hands up there were better than one.  He’d tied the heavier rope to the cords around the Virgin while she’d made her way to the bottom.  What if he hadn’t tied the knots securely enough?  What if the rope slipped out of his hands as he was lowering her?

What if he dropped her on purpose, hoping she’d smash into a thousand pieces to prove that he’d been right all along?

Carrie reigned in her stampeding thoughts.  How could she even think such a thing?  She was sure it hadn’t crossed Dan’s mind.

Then why had it crossed hers?

Maybe she was losing perspective.  It was the heat, the distance from home, the isolation of the desert...it was the epiphany of standing before the Mother of God and then cradling her remains in her arms.

So much had happened in the past 24 hours and the cumulative effect was...overwhelming.

She shook herself and concentrated on the blue of the descending bundle, twisting and swaying on its slowly lengthening tether.  Dan was out of sight beyond the lip.  She lifted her arms, waiting.  Soon it was just above her, and then she had a grip on two of the binding cords.  As it continued its descent she swung it around and guided it feet first toward the open rear door of the Explorer.

And then it was done.  The Virgin was off the tav and safely at rest in the back of their car.

Dan must have noticed the sudden slack.  His voice drifted down from overhead.

“Everything okay down there?”

She waved without looking up.  Her eyes were fixed on the blanket-wrapped bundle lying before her.  She still didn’t know what she’d do with the Virgin once she got her to New York; she simply knew she had to keep her near.

She spoke softly.  “Perfect.”

“Heads up!” Dan called from above.

She glanced up and saw the remaining length of the rope stretched out in the air, coiling like a collapsing spring as it fell to earth.

“I’m on my way,” he said.

Fifteen minutes later he arrived, lugging the lamp and the flashlights.  He quickly loaded them into the back of the Explorer.

Carrie said, “What about the rope?”

“We’ll leave it.  Can’t fly it back to the States anyway.”

“How about that other cave?  Didn’t you say you wanted to take a look in it before we leave?”

He stared across the canyon a moment, then shook his head.

“Maybe some other time.”

“Other time?  When will there be another time?’

“Probably never.  But I think I’ve had enough of this place for now.  I’d like to be out of here.”

Carrie nodded.  She had the same feeling.  She didn’t know why, but she had an urge to put this place behind them as quickly as possible.

‡

As Kesev cruised down Route 90 he saw a black, truck-like vehicle pull onto the highway about half a mile ahead and accelerate toward him in the northbound lane.  No roads around here, at least nothing paved.  Whoever was driving must have been roaming the hills and desert.  Nothing unusual about that.  Off-road exploring was popular with tourists these days, which was why the rental companies in the Central and South districts did such a brisk business in four-wheel drive vehicles.  But what bothered Kesev was where the truck had come onto the highway.

Right where Kesev always turned off.

He gave it a good going over as it passed: black Ford Explorer, dust caked, man driving, woman in the rear seat, Eldan Rent-A-Car sticker on the back bumper.  He made a mental note of the license plate.

When he made his usual turn off and saw the still settling dust trailing west toward the hills, he stopped his Jeep and jotted the license plate number in the notepad he always carried.

Just in case.

They he gunned the Jeep toward the uplands.

He had a bad feeling about this.

That bad feeling worsened as he spotted patches of rutted earth and tire tracks here and there along the path toward the Resting Place.  Never, in all the times he’d been back and forth, had he encountered a single tire track this far into the Wilderness.  Not even his own from previous trips.  Sharav, the incessant desert wind, saw to that, scouring the land clean of all traces of human passage, usually overnight.

Which meant these were fresh tracks.  But who’d made them?  The couple in that Explorer?  Or somebody else—somebody who even now might be desecrating the Resting Place.

Despite the Jeep’s efficient air-conditioning, Kesev began to sweat.  He upped his speed past the safety limit into the reckless zone.  He didn’t care.  Something was wrong here.

He ground his teeth and cursed himself for not leaving last night.

Finally the tav rock hove into view.  No other vehicles in sight, but that brought no relief—he was following a double set of tire tracks.  Two vehicles?  Or a single vehicle arriving and departing?

He swung around the front of the tav and let out a low moan as he spotted the lengthy coil of rope tangled under the overhang.

“Lord in Heaven,” he whispered, “don’t let this be!  Please don’t let this be!”

Fear knotted around his heart as he gunned the jeep into the canyon and slewed to a halt at the base of the path to the top.  Without bothering to turn off the engine, he leaped out and scampered up the ledge as fast as he dared, muttering and crying out as he climbed.

“Never should have left here”...Please, God!  Let her still be there!...”What was I thinking?”...Dear Lord, if she is still there I swear I will never leave this place again.  Not even for food!...”Should have moved back after the scroll was stolen, should have foreseen this!”...Please hear me, Lord, and have mercy on a fool!

The instant Kesev’s head cleared the top of the plateau, his eyes darted to the mouth of the Resting Place.  At first glance the barricade of rocks appeared undisturbed and he slumped forward onto the ledge, gasping, nearly sobbing in relief.  But as he rose to his feet to send up a fervent prayer of thanks, he spotted the dark crescent atop the barricade—an opening into the Resting Place.  The sight of it drove a blade of panic into his throat.

“No!”

He broke into a dead run, clambered up the rocks and all but dove head first into the opening.  Enough light streamed through the opening to guide his way to the tunnel.  He scrambled through to the second chamber.  Stygian darkness here.  Kesev’s heart was a mailed fist pounding against the inner wall of his ribs as he felt his way across the chamber to the niche where the Mother’s bier had been set.  His fingers found the edge, then hesitated of their own accord, as if afraid to proceed any further, afraid to find the niche empty.

He forced them forward—

Empty!

“No!”

Sobbing, he dropped to his knees and crawled around on the stone floor, running his hands over every inch of its craggy surface, choking in the clouds of dust he raised, all in the futile hope that she might still be here.

But she was not.  The Mother was gone.  The Resting Place had been vandalized and the Mother stolen.

Tearing at his beard, Kesev staggered to his feet and screamed as the blackness surrounding him seeped into his despairing soul.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!”

For an eternal moment he stood there, impotent, lost, devoid of the most tenuous hope, frozen, incapable of thought...

And then he remembered the car he’d seen turning onto Route 90 earlier...the black Explorer.

Maybe it wasn’t too late.   Maybe he still had a chance.  He had no honor to salvage, and no hope of redemption, but if he could retrieve the Mother and return her to the Resting Place, he could continue his task as her guardian.

Hope bubbled up like a cold spring in the heart of a desert...but he dared do little more than wet his lips.

All the way back to the highway, Kesev fixed the image of the Explorer in his mind, trying to remember whatever details he could about the driver and passenger.  They’d been shadows, identifiable as male and female and little more.  When he screeched onto Route 90 again, he floored the accelerator, pushing the Jeep to 150 kilometers an hour in the open stretches, ready to flash his Shin Bet ID at any highway cop who tried to slow him down.

He called information and learned that Eldan had a car rental office in the Jerusalem Hilton.

Hope edged a trifle higher.

‡

He located the Eldan desk in the spacious lobby of the tower portion of the Hilton.  The pert brunette there wore a name tag that said “Chaya” in English.  Kesev made sure she was properly impressed by his Shin Bet ID, then he handed her the sheet from his notepad with the number of the Explorer’s license plate.

“Did you rent a Ford Explorer with this plate out of here?”

“Explorer, you say?”  She tapped a few instructions into the terminal before her.  A few beeps later, Chaya smiled.  “Yes, sir.  To an American.  Carolyn Ferris.  Out of New York.”

What luck!  Found them on the first try.  Then again, if you were going to explore the area around the Dead Sea, Jerusalem was the ideal base.

“Have they returned the car yet?”

She shook her head.  “Not yet.”

“When’s it due back?”

“Today, I would assume.  They took it on a two-day special—unlimited mileage.  But there’s nothing to say they won’t keep it till tomorrow.  They have an option for extra days.”

Tomorrow—he prayed they wouldn’t keep it till then.  Especially since he wasn’t even sure this Ferris couple were the ones he wanted.  The tire tracks around the Resting Place might not be theirs.

But they were the only lead he had.

If only there were some way to involve Shin Bet in this.  He could have the tire tracks identified as to their size and brand and from that get a list of what vehicles used them as standard equipment.  If a Ford Explorer was on the list, he’d issue an all-points alert for the Ferrises and their vehicle.

But Shin Bet would want to know what crime they’d committed or were suspected of committing.  Theft?  What did they steal?

Kesev could not answer those basic questions, so Shin Bet had to stay out of it.

He was on his own.

He wrote down his cell number and handed it to the Eldan clerk.

“I will be close by and will be checking in with you frequently.  But if I am not about, call this number immediately should you hear from the Ferrises.  Make sure you fill in whoever relieves you.”

“Are they dangerous?” Chaya said, a note of anxiety creeping into her voice.

He smiled to reassure her.  It wasn’t easy.  He wanted to grab the front of her blouse and pull her half across the counter and shout that they may have stolen a relic that God Himself had designated as untouchable and only God Himself knew what might happen to Kesev—to the entire world—if it was not returned immediately to its designated Resting Place.

Instead he kept his tone low and even.

“Absolutely not.  They are just a couple of tourists who may have witnessed something and we need to question them.  The problem is that they don’t know we’re looking for them and we don’t know where to find them.  Not yet.  But with your help we can clear up this matter swiftly and everyone can go about their business.”

Meanwhile, he didn’t have to sit idle.

He went to one of the Hilton’s house phones and asked the operator to connect him with the Ferris room.  He slammed his fist on the counter when she informed him that there was no Ferris registered at the hotel, then glanced around to see if he’d startled anyone.  He did not want to attract attention.  He forced himself to return the receiver gently to its cradle.

Then he pulled out his phone and called all the major and some of the minor hotels in Jerusalem, asking to be connected to the Ferris room.

No luck.  They weren’t registered in Jerusalem.  One could almost believe they’d driven to the north end of Route 90, and instead of turning left toward Jerusalem, turned right toward Jordan.  Or worse yet, were hijacked by some Hezbollah crazies...

The thought staggered Kesev, weakening his knees.

The Mother...in the hands of that rabble

No.  Such a thing was unthinkable, so why torture himself with it?

Kesev found himself a seat in the lobby where he had an unobstructed view of the Eldan desk.  He calmed himself with the thought that he had done all that one man could do at the moment.  All that was left was the waiting.  So he sat and waited.  He was good at waiting.  An expert.

Sooner or later the Ferris couple would show up to return their car.  When they did he would confront them.  He’d know if they were hiding something.  And if they were, he’d get it out of them.  First by intimidating them with his Shin Bet credentials.  If that didn’t work, there were other ways.

Kesev slipped his left hand into his pocket and gripped the handle of the long folding knife he always carried.

Yes, he thought grimly.  He knew other ways, and he was quite ready to use whatever means were necessary to return the Mother to the Resting Place.

THIRTEEN

Tel Aviv

“It should be right around the next corner to the left,” Carrie said, glancing between the street signs and the map on her lap.

“I sure as hell hope so,” Dan muttered from the front seat.

Carrie reached forward and gave his shoulder a gentle rub.

Poor Dan.  Not a happy camper at the moment.  He’d complained most of the trip that her sitting in the back made him feel like a chauffeur.  Carrie was sorry about that, but with the way the Explorer had bounced around the hills, she’d been afraid the Virgin would be harmed.  She’d folded down part of the rear seat and pulled the Virgin’s blanket-swathed form beside her to steady and protect it.

But even after they hit paved road she’d stayed here, her fingers gripping one of the cords that bound the blankets.  Carrie felt good sitting close to the Virgin.  Despite the danger in smuggling her out of the country—Carrie had no idea how the Israeli government felt about smuggling, but she was sure it could cost Dan and her years in jail if they were caught—she felt strangely calm.  At peace.

“Damn this traffic!”

Dan was anything but at peace.  They’d got lost twice already, and now they were sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic that would give Manhattan’s cross-town crawl a run for its money, all of which might have been bearable if the air conditioner had been working.  Tel Aviv in the summer...almost as hot as the desert they’d left this morning, but suffocatingly humid thanks to the Mediterranean, only blocks away.

“At last!” Dan said as he turned off Ibn Givrol in the northern end of the city.

Carrie saw it too: The Kaplan Gallery.  Gold letters on black marble over two large windows filled with paintings and sculpture.  A spasm of anxiety tightened her fingers around the cord.  She prayed Bernard Kaplan would help them.  If not, where else could they go?

Dan had called Kaplan from Jerusalem and asked if he could arrange a shipment for them similar to the one he’d arranged for Harold Gold.  Dan said Kaplan had been non-committal on the phone but gave them directions—not very good directions—to his gallery.

Dan double-parked and turned to her.

“Stay with the car.  I’ll leave the engine running and go inside.  Hope this isn’t a wasted trip.”

Carrie nodded and watched him disappear through the gallery doors.  She sat in the heat and fumes, ignoring the glares of annoyed drivers as they inched around the Explorer.  As long as they weren’t police...

Dan seemed to take forever inside.  Finally, when she was almost ready to run in and see what was taking him so long, he emerged with a man in a gray business suit—tall, tanned, silver hair slicked straight back.

Dan introduced him as Bernard Kaplan.  He said Mr. Kaplan had called Harold in the interim and Harold had vouched for them.

“He wants to get a look at the size of our, uh, sculpture.”

“Ah, yes,” Kaplan said with a British accent—or was it Australian?—and flashed a dazzling set of caps as he looked at the bundle.  “About life-sized, as you said.  I’ll have a couple of my men bring it in and we’ll—”

“That’s okay,” Carrie said quickly.  “We’ll bring it in ourselves.”

Kaplan glanced at Dan who nodded and said, “It could be fragile and this way we’ll take full responsibility for any damage.”

Kaplan shrugged.  “Right.  Very well, then.  I’ll have one of my men find a parking spot for your car.”

With Carrie taking the shoulders and Dan the legs, they carried the bundled Virgin the length of the gallery to the shipping area at the rear where they placed her on a bench.

Before she could stop him, Kaplan had a knife out and was cutting the cords.

“What are you doing?” Carrie said.

“Going to take a look at this sculpture of yours.”

“Must you?”

“Of course.  How else can I list it for the manifest?”

She watched anxiously as Kaplan cut the rest of the cords and unwrapped the blankets.  He gave a low whistle when he saw the Virgin’s face.  His diction seemed to regress.

“Well, now, that’s bloody somethin’, in’it?”

He leaned closer and touched the Virgin’s face, running the tip of his index finger over her cheek.  Carrie wanted to grab his wrist and yank him away, but restrained herself.

A few more indignities, Mother Mary, then you’ll be on your way to safety.

“What is this?” Kaplan said.  “Some sort of wax?  I’ve never seen anything like it.  The detail is incredible.  Where’d you get it?”

Dan glanced at Carrie before he spoke.  On the trip from the desert they’d agreed that rather than invent a series of lies, the best course was to give no answers at all.

“We’d prefer to keep our source a secret,” Dan said.

Kaplan nodded and straightened.  Carrie sighed with relief as he folded the blankets back over the Virgin.

“Very well.  But I see no problem shipping this out.  We’ll simply list it as a wax sculpture—a piece of contemporary art.”

An idea flashed in Carrie’s mind.  She turned to Dan.  “Why can’t we do that ourselves?  Ship it home on the plane with us?”

“You could do that,” Kaplan said.  “You wouldn’t need me for that.  But remember, anything going aboard an El Al flight gets a going over like no other place in the world.  Direct inspection, dogs, metal scanners, x-rays—”

“Never mind,” Carrie said quickly as she imagined the Virgin’s skeleton lighting up on an inspector’s fluoroscopic scanner.  “We’ll do it your way.”

“Very well.  I can include it with a consignment of other crates I’ve scheduled for shipment, and have it on a freighter out of Haifa tonight.”

“Wonderful!  When will it get to New York?”

“It’s not going to New York,” Kaplan said.  “At least not on this freighter.  The Greenbriar will take your shipment to Cork Harbor.  After that, we’ll have to make other arrangements for the second leg.”

“Can’t we get a non-stop?”

Kaplan’s smile was tolerant.  “No, love.  We don’t want a direct route.  Why draw a line straight to your door?  Much safer to break up the trip.  We ship your crate to a fictitious name in Cork where one of my associates picks it up, holds it awhile, then puts it on another ship to New York.  Bloody near impossible to trace.”

Carrie was uncomfortable with the thought of the Virgin lying in a moldy warehouse in Ireland, but if this sort of route would safeguard her secret...

“How do we pay you?”

“Cash, preferably.”

She looked at Dan.  Cash?  Who had cash?  All she had was the AmEx card Brad had given her.

“Do you take plastic?”

Kaplan sighed.  “I suppose we can work something out.”

‡

Jerusalem

Kesev had given up sitting and waiting.  Now he was pacing and waiting.  He’d explored every nook and cranny of the lobby, browsed all the shops until he thought he’d explode with frustration.  Where were these people, these Ferrises?  They had to turn in their rental sooner or later.

Didn’t they?

An awful thought struck him.  He ran to the Eldan counter.  Chaya was still there.  She’d just finished with a customer when Kesev arrived.

“How many offices—rental centers—do you have?”

“I’m not sure,” she said, furrowing her brow.  “Let’s see... a couple in Tel Aviv, a couple in Haifa, one at Ben Gurion—”

This was worse than he thought.  “Can these people, the Ferrises, turn their car in at any of them?”

“It’s not a practice we encourage.  In fact, there’s a drop-off fee that—”

Kesev tried to keep from shouting.  “Can they or can’t they?  A simple yes or no will do.”

“Yes.”

I am cursed by God, he thought.  I have always been cursed.

He wanted to scream, but that would solve nothing.

“I want you to call every Eldan agency in the country.”

“But sir—”

“Every one of them!  It won’t take you long.  See if the Ferris car has been turned in at any of them.  If not, give them this very simple message: The Ferrises rented their car here and you wish to be notified immediately if they turn in their car anywhere else.  Immediately.  Is that clear?  Is that simple enough?”

She nodded, cowed by his ferocity.

“Good.  Then get to it.”

He turned and stalked away from the counter to continue his pacing.  And as he paced he was haunted with the possibility that the Ferris couple might have had nothing at all to do with the disappearance of the Mother.

‡

Haifa

Haifa had its beauties and Carrie wished she could spend some time here seeing the sights.  Behind them rose Mount Carmel, high, green and beautiful; somewhere on its slopes, near the Stella Maris lighthouse, sat the Mount Carmel monastery, home of the Carmelite order; and in a grotto on the monastery grounds stood the cedar-and-porcelain statue of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.  Carrie would dearly love to climb the mountain to see it.

But she had to be all business now as she and Dan stood in the monolithic shadow of the huge Dagon grain silo and watched the inspector check off the crates on the manifest from the Kaplan Gallery.  Her American Express account now carried the purchase price of a piece of “modern sculpture” from the Kaplan Gallery.  Carrie had nothing tangible to show for that charge, but the Virgin had been packed up and placed on the gallery’s shipping manifest.  Carrie scanned the ships anchored in the harbor but couldn’t make out their names in the hazy air.  One of them was the Greenbriar which would unknowingly start the Virgin on the first leg of her long journey to a new home.  Beyond the long breakwater stretched the azure expanse of the Mediterranean, bluer than she’d ever imagined a sea could be.

The creak of nails snapped her attention back to the docks.  The inspector was using a pry bar to open one of the crates.  She looked more closely.

Good God, it was the Virgin’s crate!

She stepped forward but Dan grabbed her arm.

“Easy, Carrie,” he whispered.  “I told you we shouldn’t have come.”

True enough.  Carrie should have been satisfied that the Virgin was safe after watching Kaplan’s staff seal her into that excelsior-filled shipping crate, but she couldn’t let her go.  Not yet.  She’d insisted on accompanying the crate to Haifa.  There’d been this overpowering urge to see her off, like a child coming to the docks to wish a beloved parent bon voyage.

And now she was glad she’d come.

“That’s our crate.  Why did he have to pick ours?”

“Kaplan warned us that they do spot checks.  Don’t worry.  She’ll pass.  Just stay calm.”

Carrie held her breath as the inspector lifted the crate top and pushed the excelsior aside.  He unfolded the blankets and she saw him freeze for a moment as he stared at the Virgin’s face.  She watched him lean closer, staring.

Please don’t touch her.  PLEASE don’t!

The inspector looked up from the crate and scanned the area.  He had close-cropped gray hair, wore aviator sunglasses, and carried himself like an ex-military man.  When he spotted Dan and Carrie, he tucked his clipboard under his arm and approached them.

Beside her, Carrie heard Dan mutter a soft, “Uh-oh.”

The inspector thrust his hand at Dan.  “Good day.  My name is Sidel.  You are the owner of that sculpture, I believe?”

“Yes,” Carrie said.  She noticed that he didn’t offer to shake hands with her.  “We just acquired it.”  She emphasized the first word.

“It’s most unusual for people to come down to the docks to see off a shipment, but in your case I can understand why.  What an extraordinary piece.  Who’s the artist, if I may ask?”

“Frankly, I don’t know,” Dan said.  “We saw it and just had to have it.”

Sidel nodded.  “I can understand.  I do a little toying with modeling clay myself, so I can appreciate the fantastic detail of this work.  You’re shipping it to Ireland?”

Carrie felt her heart begin to thump.  Why all these questions?

But Dan was cool.  “The name’s Fitzpatrick, after all.”

“Enjoy it,” Sidel said, turning away.  “I envy you.”

Sidel returned to the crate, stared at the Virgin a moment longer, then shook himself and covered her again.  Carrie’s heart rate began to slow as the crate top was nailed back into place.  She sagged against Dan.

“Oh, Lord.  That was close.  For one very long minute there I thought...”

“You and me both.  All right.  We’ve seen her off.  Time to go.”

Reluctantly, Carrie had to agree.  They’d discussed their options as they’d followed the Kaplan Gallery truck to Haifa.  Dan saw two courses: Stay in Israel a while longer, then head home, or head directly home tonight.  He favored the latter.

Carrie agreed with getting out of Israel as soon as possible.  Just as she had at the Resting Place, she felt an urge to keep moving.  But she preferred a third route: Fly to Ireland and meet the Greenbriar in Cork, make sure the Virgin was transferred properly, then fly back to New York and wait for her there.

They’d argued but eventually Carrie had won, as she’d known she would.  From the outset she hadn’t the slightest intention of doing it any other way.

She’d called and learned that there was an El Al flight to London tonight.  If they hurried, they could make it.  From there it was practically a shuttle flight to Shannon.

They wheeled into Ben Gurion Airport with time to spare.  But they received a shock when they turned in the Explorer at the El Dan desk.

“Ferris!” said the thin, mustached man behind the counter.  “Boy, have you caused a stir.”

Carrie saw Dan go pale and felt her own heart kick up its tempo again.

“Really?” Dan said.  “What’s the problem?  Look, I know we rented the car in Jerusalem but I thought we could return it anywhere we—”

“Oh, that’s not the problem.  No drop-off fee if you turn it in here.  But somebody at the Jerusalem desk has been burning up the wires looking for you two.  Something about a Shin Bet fellow who wants to talk to you.”

“Shin Bet?” Carrie said.

“Right.  Domestic Intelligence.  Somewhat akin to your FBI, I believe.  But don’t worry.  You’re not in any trouble.  Just wants to ask you some questions.”

“Well, uh, we’ll be glad to cooperate in any way we can,” Dan said.  “Just, uh, have us paged.  We’ll be around for a while.”

His grip was tight on her arm as he led her toward the El Al ticket counters.  Her mouth felt dry.  Were they in trouble?

“Dan, what’s the matter?  Why would this Shin Bet—?”

His voice was tight.  “Somebody’s onto us.  How long before we leave?”

Carrie glanced at her watch.  “A little less than an hour.”

“Damn!”  He stopped.  “Look.  Before we buy our tickets and check our bags, let’s get changed.”

“Why?  What for?”

“It might give us an edge to be in uniform.”

‡

Jerusalem

Kesev had come to the end of his patience.  He was about ready to explode with frustration and start breaking some Hilton property when he saw someone gesturing to him from the Eldan desk.

Chaya had gone home.  Sharon, a brittle-looking peroxide blonde had replaced her.  She was waving a bony arm over her head.

“We found them!” she said, grinning as he approached.

Kesev’s heart leapt.  He wanted to take her in his arms and dance her around the lobby.  Perhaps God had not deserted him after all.  Perhaps this was just a warning.

“When?  Where?”

“They turned their rental into one of our Tel Aviv locations just a few moments ago.”

“Which one?”

“Ben Gurion.”

Kesev went cold.  The airport!  Merciful God, they’re leaving the country!

He wheeled and ran for the door.

“Where are you going?” Sharon called out behind him.  “You can call from here.  They said they’d be there awhile and you could page them!”

Page them?  Kesev groaned as the meaning of her words sank in.  The Ben Gurion desk must have blabbered that someone was looking for them.  They’d probably be long gone by the time he got there.

‡

Ben Gurion Airport

Kesev was sure he made the fifty kilometers to Ben Gurion in record time.  For once luck was on his side.  The airport was designated Tel Aviv but actually it was in Lod, just east of the city.  If he’d had to fight city traffic, he’d still be in his car.  But he wasn’t looking for a racing medal.  He wanted the Ferrises.

He flashed his ID at the El Al ticket desk and had them run a computer search for a couple by that name.  They found a single.  Carolyn Ferris.  On a one-way to Heathrow.  Seat 12C, non-smoking.  Boarding now.  Gate 17.

A single.  He was looking for a couple.  But this Carolyn was the only Ferris he had.  And if he didn’t check her out right now, she’d be gone.

Kesev ran for Gate 17.

He wasn’t armed so he had no problem with the metal detectors and his Shin Bet ID got him to the boarding area without a ticket.  But along the way he picked up a friend: Sergeant Yussl Kuttner of airport security.

The last thing Kesev wanted at this point was someone looking over his shoulder, but he had no choice.  Anything that deviated from normal airport routine was Kuttner’s business, and allowing an unticketed man onto an El Al plane, even if he was Shin Bet, was certainly not routine.  Kuttner was armed and he wasn’t letting Kesev out of his sight.

“Just what is this passenger suspected of, Mr. Kesev?” Kuttner said, puffing as he trotted beside Kesev.

Kesev improvised.  “The home office didn’t have time to fill me in on all the details.  All I know is that an archeological artifact has been stolen and that the thieves will be trying to smuggle it out of the country.”

“And Shin Bet believes this passenger in 12C is involved?”

“We don’t know.  We do know one of the suspects is named Ferris.  That’s why I need to speak to her.  You really don’t have to bother yourself.”

“Quite all right.  Besides, if you want to remove her from the plane, you’ll need me.”

Kesev clenched his jaws.  This was getting stickier and stickier.  If only he’d had more time to set this up.

Kuttner led him down the boarding ramp to the loaded plane and explained the situation to the stewardesses while Kesev moved down the aisle, looking for row 12.

He froze, staring.  The right half of row 12 held only one passenger.  Seats A and B were empty.  Seat C was occupied by a nun.  A young, pretty nun.  Almost too pretty to be a nun.  That gave him heart.

“Excuse me, Sister,” he said, leaning forward.  “Is your name Ferris?”

“Why, yes,” she said, smiling.  She had a wonderful smile.  And such guileless blue eyes.  “Sister Carolyn Ferris.  Is something wrong?”

What to say?  He had no time to ease into this, so he might as well throw it in her face and see how she reacts.

He flashed his Shin Bet ID and kept his voice low.  “You’re wanted for questioning in regard to the theft of an archeological treasure that belongs to the Israeli government.”

She reacted with a dumbfounded expression.

“What?  Are you mad?  Just what sort of treasure am I supposed to have stolen?”

“You know exactly what it is, Sister.  It doesn’t belong to you.  Please give it back.”

“Does it belong to you?”

The question took Kesev by surprise.  And she was staring at him, her narrowed eyes boring into his, as if seeing something there.

“No...no...it belongs to—”

“Who are you?” she said.

“I told you.  Kesev, with—”

“No.  That’s not true.”  Her eyes widened now, as if she were suddenly afraid of him.  “You’re not who you say you are.  You’re someone else.  Who are you—really?”

Now it was Kesev’s turn to be dumbfounded.  How did she know?  How could she know?

Reflexively he backed away from her.  Who was this woman?

“Excuse me, Sister,” said another voice.  “Is this man bothering you?”

Kesev looked up to see a tall priest rising from an aisle seat a few rows back, glaring down at him as he approached.

“The poor man seems deranged,” Sister Carolyn said.

The priest reached above the nun’s seat and pressed the call button for the stewardess.  “I’ll have him removed.”

Kesev backed away.  “Sorry.  My mistake.”

The last thing he wanted was a scene.  He had no official capacity here and no logical reason he could give his superiors for pulling this woman off the plane.

Besides, he was looking for a man and a woman, not a nun.  Especially not that nun.  Something about her, something ethereal...the way she’d looked at him...looked through him.  She’d looked at him and she knew.  She knew!

He staggered forward through a cloud of confusion.  What was happening?  Everything had been fine until that damn SCUD had crashed near the Resting Place.  Since then it had been one thing after another, chipping at the foundations of his carefully reconstructed life, until today’s cataclysm.

Kuttner looked at him questioningly as he reached the front of the cabin.

“Not her,” Kesev said.  “But I want to check the cargo hold.”

The head stewardess groaned and Kuttner said, “I don’t know about that.”

“It will only take a minute or two.  The object in question is at least a meter and a half in length.  It can’t be in a suitcase.  I just want to check out the larger parcels.”

Kuttner shrugged resignedly.  “All right.  But let’s get to it.”

‡

Dan quietly slipped into 12A.  His boarding pass had him in 15D—they’d decided it was best not to sit together—but Carrie had this half of row 12 to herself so he joined her.  But not too close.

When no none was looking he reached across the empty seat and grabbed her hand.  It was cold, sweaty, trembling.

“You were great,” he whispered.

She’d been more than great, she’d been wonderful.  When he’d seen that little bearded rooster of a Shin Bet man stalk down the aisle, he’d prayed for strength in the imminent confrontation.  But he’d stopped at Carrie’s seat, not Dan’s.  And then Dan had cursed himself for not realizing that their pursuer would be looking for someone named Ferris.  But Carrie had stood up to that Shin Bet man, kept her cool, and faced him down.  Dan had only stepped in to add the coup de grace.

“I don’t feel great.  I feel sick.”

“What did you say to him at the end?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he hadn’t seemed too sure of himself in the first place, but—”

Carrie’s smile was wan but real.  “We can thank your idea of getting into uniform for that.”

“Sure, but you said something and all the color went out of him.”

“I asked him who he really was.  As he was speaking to me I had the strangest feeling about him, that he was an impostor—or maybe that isn’t the right word.  I think he’s truly from their domestic intelligence, whatever it’s called, but he’s also someone else.  And he’s hiding that someone else.”

“Whatever it is, I’d say you struck a nerve.”

“I didn’t really have a choice.  I just knew right then that I was very afraid of the person he was hiding.”

“So am I, though probably not for the same reason.  Damn, I wish we’d get moving.  What’s the hold up?”

Dan looked past Carrie through the window at the lights of the airport, and wondered what Mr. Kesev was up to now.  He wouldn’t feel safe until they were in the air and over the Mediterranean.

“And yet,” Carrie said softly, “there’s something terribly sad about him.  He said something that shocked me.”

“What?”

“He said ‘please.’  He said, ‘Please give it back.’  Isn’t that strange?”

‡

Kesev stood at one of the panoramic windows in the main terminal and watched the plane roar into the sky toward London.

Nothing.

He’d found nothing in the cargo hold or baggage compartment large enough to contain the Mother.

That gave him hope, at least, that the Mother was still in Israel.  And if she was still here, he could find her.

But where was she?  Where?

He trembled at the thought of what might happen if she were not safely returned to the Resting Place.

FOURTEEN

The Greenbriar—off Crete

Second mate Dennis Maguire was rounding the port side of the superstructure amidships when he saw her.

At least it seemed to be a her.  He couldn’t be sure in the downpour.  The figure stood a good fifty feet away in the center of the aft hold’s hatch, wrapped head to toe in some sort of blanket, completely unmindful of the driving rain as she stared aftward.  He couldn’t make out any features in the dimness, but something in his gut knew he was looking at a she.

They’d run into the squall shortly after dark the first night out of Haifa.  Maguire was running a topside check to make double sure everything was secure.  A sturdy little tramp, the Greenbriar was.  With a 200-foot keel and thirty feet abeam, she could haul good cargo in her two holds, and haul it fast.  But any storm, even lightweight Mediterranean squalls like this one, could be trouble if everything wasn’t secured the way it was supposed to be.  And Captain Liam could be hell on wheels if something went wrong because of carelessness.

So Maguire had learned: Do it right the first time, then double check to make sure you did what you thought you did.

And after he wound up this little tour of the deck, he could retire to his cabin and work on his bottle of Jameson’s.

I’m glad I haven’t touched that bottle yet, he thought.

Because right now he’d be blaming the whiskey for what he was seeing.

A woman?  How the hell had a woman got aboard?  And why would any woman want to be aboard?

She stood facing aft, like some green-gilled landlubber staring homeward.

“Hello?” he said, approaching the hatch.

She turned toward him but the glow from the lights in the superstructure weren’t strong enough to light her features through the rain.  And then he noticed something: the blanket or cloak or robe or whatever she was wrapped up in wasn’t moving or even fluttering in the wind.  In fact, it didn’t even look wet.

He blinked and turned his head as a particularly nasty gust stung his face with needle-sharp droplets, and when he looked again, she was gone.

He ran across the hatch and searched the entire afterdeck but could not find a trace of her.  So he ran and told the captain.

Liam Harrity puffed his pipe and stared out at him from the mass of red hair that encircled his face.

“What have we discussed about you hitting the Jameson’s while you’re on duty, Denny?” he said.

“Captain, I swear, I haven’t touched a drop to me lips since last night.”  Maguire leaned closer.  “Here.  Smell me breath.”

The captain waved him off.  “I don’t want to be smelling your foul breath!  Just get to your bunk and don’t be after coming to me with anymore stories of women on my ship.  Get!”

Dennis Maguire got, but he knew in his heart there’d been someone out there in the storm tonight.  And somehow he knew they hadn’t seen the last of her.

‡

Paraiso

“Charlie, Charlie, Charlie,” the Senador said, shaking his head sadly.

Emilio Sanchez stood at a respectful distance from the father and son confrontation.  He had moved to leave the great room after delivering Charlie here, but the Senador had motioned him to stay.  Emilio was proud of the Senador’s show of trust and confidence in him, but it pained him to see this great man in such distress.  So Emilio stepped back against the great fireplace and stared out at the seamless blackness beyond the windows where the clouded night sky merged with the Pacific.  He watched their reflections in the glass.  And listened.

“I thought we had an understanding, Charlie.”  The Senador leaned forward, staring earnestly across the long, free-form redwood coffee table at his son who sat with elbows on knees, head down.  “You promised me six months.  You promised me you’d stay here and go through therapy...learn to pray.”

“It’s not what you think, Dad,” Charlie said softly in a hoarse voice.  He sounded exhausted.  Defeated.

The fight seemed to have gone out of Charlie.  Which didn’t jibe at all with his recent flight from Paraiso.  If he wasn’t bucking his father, why did he run?

Two days ago the Senador had called Emilio to his home office in a minor panic.  Charlie was gone.  His room was empty, and he was nowhere in the house or on the grounds.  Juanita said she’d passed a taxi coming the other way when she’d arrived early this morning.

Emilio had sighed and nodded.  Here we go again.

Fortunately Juanita remembered the name of the cab company.  From there it was easy to trace that particular fare—the whole damn company was buzzing about picking up a fare at Paraiso that wanted to be taken all the way to Frisco.  The driver had dropped his fare off on California Street.

Charlie had run to his favorite rat hole again.

Over the years, during repeated trips in search of Charlie, Emilio had been in and out of so many gay bars in San Francisco that some of the regulars had begun to think he was a maricon himself.  To counteract that insulting notion, he’d made it a practice to bust the skull anyone who tried to get friendly.

But this time he hadn’t found Charlie down in the Tenderloin.  Instead, he’d traced him to the Embarcadero.  Charlie had taken a room in the Hyatt, of all places.

When Emilio had knocked on his door, Charlie hadn’t acted surprised, and he hadn’t launched into his usual lame protests.  He’d come quietly, barely speaking during the drive back.

That wasn’t like Charlie.  Something was wrong.

“What am I to think, Charlie?” the Senador was saying.  “You promised me.  Remember what you said?  You said you’d ‘give it the old college try.’  Remember that?”

“Dad—”

“And you were doing so well!  Doctor Thompson said you were very cooperative, really starting to open up to him.  And you seemed to be getting into the spirit of the prayer sessions, feeling the presence of the Lord.  What happened?  Why did you break your promise?”

“I didn’t break my promise.”  He didn’t look up.  He stared at the table before him, seemingly lost in the redwood whorls.  “I was coming back.  I needed—”

“You don’t need that...sort of...activity,” the Senador said.  “By falling back into that sinfulness you’ve undone all your months of work!”

“I didn’t go back for sex.”

“Please don’t make this worse by lying to me, Charlie.”

During the ensuing silence, Emilio realized that normally he too would have thought Charlie was lying, but today he didn’t think so.

“It’s the truth, Dad.”

“How can I believe that, Charlie?  Every other time you’ve disappeared to Sodom-On-The-Bay it’s been for sex.”

“Not this time.  I...I haven’t been feeling well enough for sex.”

“Oh?”

A premonition shot through Emilio like a bullet.  The Senador should have felt it too, but if he did, his face did not betray it.  He was still staring at Charlie with that same hurt, earnest expression.  Emilio rammed his fist against his thigh.  Bobo!  Charlie’s pale, feverish look, his weight loss...he should have put it together long before now.

“I’ve been having night sweats, then I developed this rash.  I didn’t run off to Frisco to get laid, Dad.  I went to a clinic there that knows about...these things.”

The Senador said nothing.  A tomblike silence descended on the great room.  Emilio could hear the susurrant flow through the air conditioning vents, the subliminal rumble of the ocean beyond the windows, and nothing more.  He realized the Senador must be holding his breath.  The light had dawned.

Charlie looked up at his father.  “I’ve got AIDS, Dad.”

Madre.  Emilio turned.

“Wh-what?”  The Senador was suddenly as pale as his son.  “That c-can’t be t-true!”

He was stuttering.  Not once in all his years with him had Emilio heard that man stutter.

Charlie was nodding.  “The doctors and the blood tests confirmed what I’ve guessed for some time.  I’ve just been too frightened to take the final step and hear someone tell me I’ve got it.”

“Th-there’s got to be some mistake!”

“No mistake, Dad.  This was an AIDS clinic.  They’re experts.  I’m not just HIV positive.  I’ve got AIDS.”

“But didn’t you use protection?  Take precautions?”

Charlie looked down again.  “Yeah.  Sure.  Most of the time.”

“Most of the time...”  The Senador’s voice sounded hollow, distant.  “Charlie...what on earth...?”

“It doesn’t matter, Dad.  I’ve got it.  I’m a dead man.”

“No, you’re not!” the Senador cried, new life in his voice as he shot from his seat.  “Don’t you say that!  You’re going to live!”

“I don’t think so, Dad.”

“You will!  I won’t let you die!  I’ll get you the best medical care.  And we’ll pray.  You’ll see, Charlie.  With God’s help you’ll come through this.  You’ll be a new man when it’s over.  You’ll pass through the flame and be cleansed, not just of your illness, but of your sinfulness as well.  You’re about to be born again, Charlie.  I can feel it!”

Emilio turned away and softly took the stairs down to his quarters.  He fought the urge to run.  Emilio did not share the Senador’s faith in the power of prayer over AIDS.  In fact, Emilio could not remember finding prayer useful for much of anything, especially in his line of work.  Rather than listen to the Senador rattle on about it, he wished to wash his hands.  He’d touched Charlie today.  He’d driven Charlie all the way back from San Francisco, sitting with him for hours in the same car, breathing his air.

When he reached the bottom floor, he broke into a trot toward his quarters.  He wanted more than to wash his hands.  He wanted a shower.

‡

The Greenbriar—east of Gibraltar

“A woman on board,” Captain Liam Harrity muttered as he thumbed tobacco into the bowl of his pipe.  “What utter foolishness is this?  Next they’ll be after telling me the ship can fly.”

Gibraltar lay three leagues ahead, its massive shadow looming fifteen degrees to starboard against the hazy stars.  Lights dotted the shores to either side as the Greenbriar prepared to squeeze between two continents and brave the Atlantic beyond.  A smooth, quiet, routine trip so far.

Except for this woman talk.

Harrity leaned against the Greenbriar’s stern rail and stared at the glowing windows in the superstructure amidships.  A good old ship, the Greenbriar.  A small freighter by almost any standards, but quick.  A tramp merchant ship, with no fixed route or schedule, picking up whatever was ready to be moved, from the Eastern Mediterranean to the UK and all points between, no questions asked.  Harrity had been in this game a long time, much of it spent on the Greenbriar, and this was the first time any of his crew had talked about seeing a woman wandering the decks.

Not that there weren’t enough places to hide one, mind you.  Small though the ship might be, she had plenty of nooks and crannies for a stowaway.

But in all his years helming the Greenbriar, Harrity had never had a stowaway—at least that he knew of—and he wasn’t about to start now.  Like having a prowler in your house.  You simply didn’t allow it.

Maguire had started the talk that first night out of Haifa.  Harrity’s thought at the time was that Dennis had been nipping at the Jameson’s a little earlier than usual.  He’d let it go and not given it another thought until two nights ago when Cleary said he’d seen a woman on the aft deck as they were passing through the Malta Channel.

A temperate man, Cleary.  Not the sort who’d be after seeing things that weren’t there.

So Harrity himself was keeping watch on the aft deck these past two nights.  And so far no woman.

He turned his back to the wind and struck a wooden match against the stern rail.  As he puffed his pipe to life, relishing the first aromatic lungfuls, a deep serenity stole over him.  The phosphorescent flashes churning in the wake, the balmy, briny air, the stars overhead, lighting the surface of the Mediterranean as it stretched long and wide and smooth to the horizon.  Life was good.

He sensed movement to his left, turned, and fumbled to catch his pipe as it dropped from his shocked-open mouth.

She stood there, beside him, not two feet away.  A woman…at the rail, staring into the east, back along the route they’d sailed.  She was wearing a loose robe of some sort, pulled up around her head.  Its cowl hid her features.  Now he knew why Maguire had thought she’d been wrapped in a blanket.

He shook off the initial shock and stuck his pipe bit between his teeth.  He should have been angry—furious, for sure—but he could find no hostility within him.  Only wonder at how she’d come up behind him without him hearing her.

“And who would you be now?”

The woman continued her silent stare off the stern.

“What are you after doing on me ship?”

Slowly she turned toward him.  He could not make out her features in the shadow of the cowl, but he felt her eyes on him.  And the weight of her stare was a gentle hand caressing the surface of his mind, erasing all questions.

She turned and walked away.  Or was she walking?  She seemed to glide along the deck.  Harrity had an urge to follow her but his legs seemed so heavy, his shoes felt riveted to the deck.  He could only stand and watch as she followed the rail along the starboard side to the superstructure where she was swallowed by the deeper shadows.

And then she was gone and he could move again.  He sucked on his pipe but the bowl was cold.  And so was he.  Suddenly the deck of the Greenbriar was a lonely place.

‡

Cashelbanagh, Ireland

Like everyone else, Monsignor Vincenzo Riccio had heard the endless talk about the green of the Irish countryside, but not until he was actually driving along the roads south of Shannon Airport did he realize how firmly based in fact all that talk had been.  He gazed through the open rear window at the passing fields.  This land was green.  In all his fifty-six years he could not remember seeing a green like this.

“Your country is most beautiful, Michael” he said.  His English was good, but he knew there was no hiding his Neapolitan upbringing.

Michael the driver—the good folk of Cashelbanagh had sent one of their number to fetch the Monsignor from the airport—glanced over his shoulder with a broad, yellow-toothed smile.

“Aye, that it is, Monsignor.  But wait till you see Cashelbanagh.  The picture-perfect Irish village.  As a matter of fact, if you’re after looking up ‘Irish village’ in the dictionary, sure enough it’ll be saying Cashelbanagh.  Perfect place for a miracle.”

“It is much farther?”

“Only a wee bit down the road.  And wait till you see the reception committee they’ll be having for you.”

Vincenzo wished he’d come here sooner.  He liked these people and the green of this land enthralled him.  But the way things were looking lately, he wouldn’t get a chance for a return visit.

And too bad he couldn’t stay longer.  But this was only a stopover, scheduled at the last minute as he was leaving Rome for New York.  He was one of the Vatican’s veteran investigators of the miraculous, and the Holy See had asked him to look into what lately had become known as the Weeping Virgin of Cashelbanagh.

The Weeping Virgin had been gathering an increasing amount of press over the past few weeks, first the Irish papers, then the London tabloids, and recently the story had gained international attention.  People from all over the world had begun to flock to the little village in County Cork to see the daily miracle of the painting of the Virgin Mary that shed real tears.  Healings had been reported—cures, visions, raptures.  “A New Lourdes!” screamed tabloid headlines all over the world.

It had been getting out of hand.  The Holy See wanted the “miracle” investigated.  The Vatican had no quarrel with miracles, as long as they were real.  But the faithful should not be led astray by tricks of the light, tricks of nature, and tricks of the calculated human kind.

They chose Vincenzo for the task.  Not simply because he’d already had experience investigating a number of miracles that turned out to be anything but miraculous, but because the Vatican had him on a westbound plane this weekend anyway, to Sloan-Kettering Memorial in Manhattan to try an experimental chemotherapy protocol for his liver cancer.  He could make a brief stop in Ireland, couldn’t he?  Take a day or two to look into this weeping painting, then be on his way again.  No pain, no strain, just send a full report of his findings back to Rome when he reached New York.

“Tell me, Michael,” Vincenzo said.  “What do you know of these miracles?”

“I’ll be glad to tell you it all, Monsignor, because I was there from the start.  Well, not the very start.  You see, the painting of the Virgin Mary has been gracing the west wall of Seamus O’Halloran’s home for two generations now.  His grandfather Danny painted it there during the year before he died.  Finished the last stroke, then took to his bed and never got up again.  Can you imagine that?  ‘Twas almost as if the old fellow was hanging on just so’s he could be finishing the painting.  Anyways, over the years the weather has faded it, and it’s become such a fixture about the village that it became part of the scenery, if you know what I’m sayin’.  Much like a tree in someone’s yard.  You pass that yard half a dozen times a day but you never take no notice of the tree.  Unless of course it happens to be spring and it’s startin’ to bloom, then you might—”

“I understand, Michael.”

“Yes.  Well, that’s the way it was after being until about a month ago when Seamus—that’s old Daniel O’Halloran’s grandson—was passing the wall and noticed a wet streak glistening on the stucco.  He stepped closer, wondering where this bit of water might be trickling from on this dry and sunny day, for contrary to popular myth, it does not rain every day in Ireland—least ways not in the summer.  I’m afraid I can’t say that for the rest of the year.  But anyways, when he saw that the track of moisture originated in the eye of his grandfather’s painting, he ran straight to Mallow to fetch Father Sullivan.  And since then it’s been one miracle after another.”

Vincenzo let his mind drift from Michael’s practiced monologue that told him nothing he hadn’t learned from the rushed briefing at the Vatican before his departure.  But he did get the feeling that life in the little village had begun to revolve around the celebrity that attended the weeping of their Virgin.

And that would make his job more difficult.

“There she is now, Monsignor,” Michael said, pointing ahead through the windshield.  “Cashelbanagh.  Isn’t she a sight.”

They were crossing a one-car bridge over a gushing stream.  As Vincenzo squinted ahead, his first impulse was to ask, Where’s the rest of it?  But he held his tongue.  Two hundred yards down the road lay a cluster of neat little one- and two-story buildings, fewer than a dozen in number, set on either side of the road.  One of them was a pub—Blaney’s, the gold-on-black sign said.  As they coasted through the village, Vincenzo spotted a number of local men and women setting up picnic tables on the narrow sward next to the pub.

Up ahead, at the far end of the street, a crowd of people waited before a neat, two-story, stucco-walled house.

“And that would be Seamus O’Halloran’s house, I imagine,” Vincenzo said.

“That it would, Monsignor.  That it would.”

There were hands to shake and Father Sullivan to greet, and introductions crowded one on top of the other until the names ran together like watercolors in the rain.  The warmest reception he’d ever had, an excited party spirit running through the villagers.  The priest from Rome was going to certify the Weeping Virgin of Cashelbanagh as an inexplicable phenomenon of Divine origin, an act of God made manifest to the faithful, a true miracle, a sign that Cashelbanagh had been singled out to be touched by God.  There was even a reporter from a Dublin paper to record it.  And what a celebration there’d be afterward.

Vincenzo was led around to the side of the house to stare at the famous Weeping Virgin on Seamus O’Halloran’s wall.

Nothing special about the painting.  Rather crude, actually.  A very stiff looking half profile of the Blessed Mother in the traditional blue robe and wimple with a halo behind her head.

And yes indeed, a gleaming track of moisture was running from the painting’s eye.

“The tears appear every day, Monsignor,” O’Halloran said, twisting his cloth cap in his bony hands as if there were moisture to be wrung from it.

“I can confirm that,” Father Sullivan said, his ample red cheeks aglow.  “I’ve been watching for weeks now.”

As Vincenzo continued staring at the wall, noting the fine meshwork of cracks in the stucco finish, the chips here and there that revealed the stonework beneath, the crowd grew silent around him.

He stepped closer and touched his finger to the trickle, then touched the finger to his tongue.  Water.  A mineral flavor, but not salty.  Not tears.

“Would someone bring me a ladder, please.  One long enough to reach the roof.”

Three men ran off immediately, and five minutes later he was climbing to the top of the gable over the Weeping Virgin’s wall.  He found wet and rotted cedar shakes at the point.  At his request a pry bar was brought and, with O’Halloran’s permission, he knocked away some of the soft wood.

Vincenzo’s heart sank when he saw it.  A cup-like depression in the stones near the top of the gable, half filled with clear liquid.  It didn’t take a rocket scientist to deduce that water collected there on rainy days—rarely was there a week, even in the summer, without at least one or two rainy days—and percolated through the stones and grout of the wall to emerge as a trickle by the painting’s eye.

The folk of Cashelbanagh were anything but receptive to this rational explanation of their miracle.

“There may be water up there,” O’Halloran said, his huge Adam’s apple bobbing angrily, “but who’s to say that’s where the tears come from?  You’ve no proof.  Prove it, Monsignor.  Prove those aren’t the tears of the Blessed Virgin.”

He’d hoped it wouldn’t turn out like this.  He’d hoped discovery of the puddle would be enough, but obviously it wasn’t.  And he couldn’t leave these people to go on making a shrine out of a leaky wall.

“Can someone get me a bottle of red wine?” Vincenzo said.

“This may be Ireland, Monsignor,” Father Sullivan said, “but I hardly think this is time for a drink.”

Amid the laughter Vincenzo said, “I’ll use it to prove my theory.  But it must be red.”

While someone ran to Blaney’s pub for a bottle, Vincenzo climbed the ladder again and splashed all the water out of the depression.  Then he refilled it with the wine.

By evening, when the Virgin’s tears turned red, Vincenzo felt no sense of victory.  His heart went out to these crestfallen people.  He saw his driver standing nearby, looking as dejected as the rest of them.

“Shall I call a taxi, Michael?”

“No, Monsignor,” Michael sighed.  “That’s all right.  I’ll be taking you back to Shannon whenever you want.”

But the airport was not where Vincenzo needed to go.  He hadn’t figured on this quick a resolution to the question of the Weeping Virgin of Cashelbanagh.  His flight out wasn’t scheduled until tomorrow night.

“Can you find me a hotel?”

“Sure, Monsignor.  There’s a lot of good ones in Cork City.”

They passed Blaney’s pub again on the way out of town.  The picnic tables were set and waiting.  Empty.  The fading sunlight glinted off the polished flatware, the white linen tablecloths flapped gently in the breeze.

If only he could have told them how he shared their disappointment, how deeply he longed for one of these “miracles” he investigated to pan out, how much he needed a miracle for himself.

‡

Cork Harbor, Ireland

Carrie’s heart leapt as she recognized the crate on the pallet being lifted from the aft hold of the freighter.

“There it is, Dan!” she whispered, pointing.

“You sure?”  He squinted through the dusky light.  “Looks like any of a couple of dozen other crates that’ve come out already.”

She wondered how Dan could have any doubt.  She’d known it the instant it cleared the hold.

“That’s the one.  No question about it.”

She locked her gaze on the crate and didn’t let it out of her sight until Bernard Kaplan’s man cleared it through Irish customs and wheeled it over to them on a dolly.

“Are you quite sure you’ll be wanting to take it from here yourself?”  He was a plump little fellow with curly brown hair, a handlebar mustache, and a Barry Fitzgerald brogue.

Dan glanced at her.  “Well...”

“Quite sure, Mr. Cassidy.”  Carrie extended her hand.  “Thank you for your assistance.”

“Not at all, Mrs. Ferris.  Just remember, your crate’s got to be at Dublin harbor the morning after tomorrow, six sharp or, believe me youse, she’ll miss the loading and then God knows when she’ll get to New York.”

“We’ll be there.”

“I hope so, ‘cause I’m washing me hands of it now.”  He glanced at his watch.  “You’ve got turty-four hours.  Plenty of time.  Just don’t you be getting yourself lost along the way.”

He waved and walked off.

“Now that we’ve got her,” Dan said, tapping the top of the crate, “what do we do with her?  We’ve got to find a place to store her overnight.”

“Store her?  We’re not sticking her in some smelly old warehouse full of rats.”

“What do you think crawls around the hold of the Greenbriar, my dear?”

She caught an edge on his voice.  Not sharp enough to cut, but enough for Carrie to notice.

Things hadn’t been quite the same between them since finding the Virgin.  They’d had some moments of closeness on the plane to Heathrow after out-foxing that Israeli intelligence man, or whoever he was, and some of that had lingered during the whirl of booking the shuttle to Shannon and finding a hotel room in Cork City.  But once they were settled in, a distance began to open between them.

It’s me, she thought.  I know it’s me.

She couldn’t help it.  All she could think about since they’d set their bags down in the Drury Hotel was that crate and its precious contents.  They’d had days to kill and Dan wanted to see some of the countryside.  Carrie had gone along, but she hadn’t been much company.  One day they drove north through the rocky and forbidding Burren to Galway Bay; on another he took her down to Kinsale, but the quaint little harbor there only made her think about the Greenbriar and worry about its voyage.  She fought visions of rough seas capsizing her, of her running aground and tearing open her hull, seawater gushing into the cargo hold and submerging the Virgin’s crate, the Mediterranean swallowing the Greenbriar and everything aboard.  She spent every spare minute hovering over the radio, dissecting every weather report from the Mediterranean.

Obsessed.

She knew that.  And she knew her obsession was coming between her and Dan.  But as much as she valued their love, it had to take a back seat for now.  Just for a while.  Until they got to New York.

After all, what could be more important than seeing the Blessed Virgin safely to her new Resting Place—wherever that may be?

They hadn’t made love since finding the Virgin, and she sensed that was what was bothering Dan the most.  In New York they suffered through much, much longer intervals without so much as touching hands, but that was different.  Here they’d been sleeping in the same bed every night and Carrie had put him off again and again.  She wasn’t sure why.

After they were resettled in New York, Carrie was sure things would get back to normal.  At least she hoped so.  She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she didn’t feel quite the same about Dan.  She still loved him fiercely, but she didn’t want him as she had two weeks ago when they’d left New York for Israel.

Because right now, it just didn’t seem...right.

“We’re taking her back to the hotel with us.”

“What?”  She could see his body stiffening with tension.  “You can’t do that.”

“Why not?  We’re paying for the room and there’s nothing that says we can’t keep a crate in it.  Besides, it’s only for two nights.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

She gave him a long, level look.  “I assure you, Dan, I am not kidding.”

‡

Dan slipped his arms around her waist from behind and nuzzled her neck.  Carrie felt her whole left arm break out in gooseflesh.

“Not now, Dan,” she said, pulling free and stepping away from him.  She pointed to the crate.  Her voiced lowered to a whisper of its own accord.  “Not with her here.”

Two bellmen had lugged the Virgin’s crate up to their second-floor room and left it on the floor by the window.  Beyond the window the River Lee made its sluggish way to the sea.

Dan returned her whisper, Elmer Fudd style.  “We’ll be vewy, vewy quiet.  She’ll never know.”

Carrie had to laugh.  “Oh, Dan.  I love you, I do, but please understand.  It just wouldn’t be right.”

He stared at her a moment.  Was that hurt in his eyes?  But he seemed to understand.  She prayed he did.

He sighed.  “All right, then, how about we go down to the lounge and see Hal Roach?  He’s only down from Dublin for one night.”

“I don’t think so.”   She wasn’t really in the mood for Ireland’s answer to Henny Youngman.

“How about we just go for a walk?”

Carrie shook her head.  “I think I’d rather just stay here.”

Dan’s expression tightened.  “Watching over her, I suppose.”

She nodded.  “In a way, yes.”

“Don’t you think you might be getting just a little carried away with this, Carrie?”

Yes, she thought.  Yes, I might.

But the Virgin was here, and so here is where Carrie wanted to be.  Simple.  She’d waited all this time on tenter hooks for the Virgin’s arrival from Haifa, and she wasn’t about to let her out of her sight until her crate was safely on board the ship in Dublin Harbor.

“I just want to stay here with her, Dan.  Is that so bad?”

“Bad?  No.  I can’t say it’s bad.  But I don’t think it’s healthy.”

He stared again, then shrugged resignedly.  “All right.  This is your show.  We’ll do it your way.”  He stepped closer and kissed her forehead.  “But I do need to get out of this room... stretch my legs... maybe cross the river and grab a pint.  I’ll be back soon.”

Before Carrie could think of anything to say, he was out the door and she was alone in the room.

Well, not completely alone.  The Virgin was here.  She knelt beside the crate and rested her head on its lid.  For one shocking, nerve-rattling moment she thought she heard a heartbeat, then she realized it was her own.

“Don’t worry, Mother Mary,” she whispered to the crate.  “I won’t leave you alone here.  You’ve given me comfort through the years when I needed it, now I’ll stand by you.”  She patted the lid of the crate.  “Till death do us part.”

‡

The Judean Wilderness

“Why?”

Kesev stood atop the tav rock with the thieves’ rope knotted around his neck and screamed out at the clear, pitiless night sky.  “Why do You torment me like this?  When will You be satisfied?  Have I not been punished enough?”

But no reply came from on high, just Sharav’s ceaseless susurrance, whispering in his ears.  Not that he’d expected an answer.  All his countless entreaties down through the years had been ignored.  Why should this one be any different?

The Lord tormented him.  Kesev was not cut out to be a Job.  He was a fighter, not a victim.  And so the Lord took extra pains to beleaguer him.   Not that he was without fault in this.  If he had been at his post when the errant SCUD had crashed below, he could have chased off the Bedouin boys when they wandered into the canyon, and hidden the scrolls before the government investigative teams arrived.

And then the Mother would still be safely tucked away in the Resting Place instead of...where?

Where was she?

Gone.  Gone from Israel.  Kesev had exhausted all his contacts and what limited use he dared make of his Shin Bet resources, but she had slipped through his fingers.  He’d sensed the Mother’s slow withdrawal from their homeland.  He didn’t know how, or in which direction she’d been taken, but he knew in the core of his being that she was gone.

He also knew it was inevitable that soon she would be revealed to the world and made a spectacle of, a sensational object of scientific research and religious controversy.  Why else would someone steal her away?

The Lord would not stand for that.  The Lord would rain his wrath down upon the Earth.

Perhaps that was the meaning behind all this.  Perhaps the theft of the Mother was the event that would precipitate the Final Days.  Perhaps...

Kesev sighed.  It didn’t matter.  He’d failed in his task and now he could see no need to prolong further the agony of this life.  Since his usefulness on Earth was at an end, surely the Lord would let him end his time on earth as well.  He would not see the Final Days, and certainly he did not deserve to see the Second Coming.  He did not even deserve to see tomorrow.

He checked once more to make sure the rope was securely tied around the half-sunk boulder about thirty feet back.  Then he stepped to the edge of the tav and looked down at his Jeep parked below.  He’d left plenty of slack, enough to allow him to fall within a dozen feet of the ground.  The end would be quick, painless.  If he was especially lucky, the force of the final jolt might even decapitate him.

Without a prayer, without a good bye, without a single regret, Kesev stepped off the edge and into space.

He kept his eyes open and made no sound as he hurtled feet first toward the ground.  He had no fear, only grim anticipation and...hope.

‡

Cork City, Ireland

Monsignor Vincenzo Riccio wandered through the thick, humid air near Cork City’s waterfront.  He’d turned off St. Patrick’s Street and was looking for a place to have a drink.  His doctors had all warned him against alcohol but right now he didn’t care.  He’d had a long hard day of crushing people’s hopes and fervor, and he needed something.  Something Holy Mother Church could not provide.  He needed a different kind of communion.

All the pubs on St. Patrick were crowded and he didn’t feel like standing.  He wanted a place to rest his feet.  He spotted a pair of lighted windows set in dark green wood.  “Jim Cashman’s” read the sign, and there was a Guinness harp over the slate where the dinner menu was scrawled in chalk.

Vincenzo peeked through the open door and saw empty seats.

Bono!  He’d found his place.

He made his way to the bar and squeezed into a space between two of the drinkers—a space that would have been too narrow for him just a year ago.

Amazing what cancer can do for the figure.

The bartender was pouring for someone else so Vincenzo took a look around.  A small place, this Jim Cashman’s—hardwood floor and paneling, a small bar tucked in the corner, half a dozen tables arrayed about the perimeter, a cold fireplace, and two TVs playing the same rugby match.

None of Cashman’s dozen or so patrons paid him any attention.  And why should they?  He wasn’t wearing his collar.  He’d left that and his cassock back in his hotel room; he was now a thin, sallow, balding, gray-haired man in his fifties dressed in a white shirt and black trousers.  Nothing at all priestly about him.

He turned to the solitary drinker to his left, a plump, red-faced fellow in a tour bus driver’s outfit, sipping from a glass of rich dark liquid.

“May I ask what you’re drinking, sir?”

The fellow stared at him a moment, as if to be sure this stranger with the funny accent was really speaking to him, then cleared his throat.

“‘Tis stout.  Murphy’s stout.  Made right here in Cork City.”

“Oh, yes.  I passed the brewery on the way in.”

Michael had driven him through the gauntlet of huge gleaming silver tanks towering over both sides of the road on the north end of town, and he remembered wondering who in the world drank all that brew.

Vincenzo said, “I tried a bottle of Guinness once, but didn’t care for it very much.”

The driver made a face.  “What?  From a bottle?  You’ve never had stout till you’ve drunk it straight from the tap as God intended.”

“Which would you recommend for a beginner, then?”

“I like Murphy’s.”

“What about Guinness?”

“It’s good, but it’s got a bit more bite.  Start with a Murph.”

Vincenzo slapped his hand on the bar.  “Murphy’s it is!”  He signaled the barkeep.  “A pint of Murphy’s, if you would be so kind, and another for my advisor here.”

When the pints arrived, Vincenzo brushed off the driver’s thanks and turned to find a seat.

“Stout’s food, you know,” the driver called after him as Vincenzo carried his glass to a corner table.  “A couple of those and you can skip a meal.

Good, he thought.  I can use a little extra nourishment.

He’d lost another two pounds this week.  The tumors in his liver must be working overtime.

“Good for what ails you too,” the driver added.  “Cures all ills.”

“Does it now?  I’ll hold you to that, my good man.”

He took a sip of the Murphy’s and liked it.  Liked it a lot.  Rich and malty, with a pleasant aftertaste.  Much better than that bottle of Guinness he’d once had in Rome.  One could almost believe it might cure all ills.

Vincenzo smiled to himself.  Now wouldn’t that be a miracle.

He looked at the faces around Jim Cashman’s and they reminded him of the faces he’d seen in Cashelbanagh, only these weren’t stricken with the bitter disappointment and accusation he’d left there.

It’s not my fault your miracle was nothing more than a leaky roof.

A young sandy-haired fellow came in and ordered a pint of Smithwick’s ale, then sat alone at the table next to Vincenzo’s and stared disconsolately at the rugby game.  He looked about as cheerful as the people Vincenzo had left at Cashelbanagh.

“Is your team losing?” Vincenzo said.

The man turned and offered a wan smile.  “I’m American.  Don’t know the first thing about rugby.”  He extended his hand.  “Dan Fitzpatrick.  And I can guess by your accent that you’re about as far from home as I am.”

Vincenzo shook it and offered his own name—sans the religious title.  No sense in putting the fellow off.  “I happen to be on my way to America.  I’m leaving for New York tomorrow.”

“Really?  That’s where my...home is.  Business or pleasure?”

“Neither, really.”  Vincenzo didn’t want to get into his medical history so he shifted the subject.  “I guess something other than rugby must be giving you such a long face.”

He wanted to kick himself for saying that.  It sounded too much like prying.  But Dan seemed eager to talk.

“You could say that.”  He flashed a disarming grin.  “Woman trouble.”

“Ah.”

Vincenzo left it at that.  What did he know about women?

“A unique and wonderful woman,” Dan went on, sipping his ale, “with a unique and wonderful problem.”

“Oh?”  Through decades of hearing confessions, Vincenzo had become the Michelangelo of the monosyllable.

“Yeah.  The woman I love is looking for a miracle.”

“Aren’t we all?”  Myself most of all.

“Not all of us.  Trouble is, mine really thinks she’s going to find one, and she seems to be forgetting the real world while she’s looking for it.”

“And you don’t think she’ll find it?”

“Miracles are sucker bait.”

Vincenzo sighed.  “As much as I hate to say it.  I fear there is some truth in that.  Although I prefer to think of the believers not as suckers, but as seekers.  I saw a village full of seekers today.”

Vincenzo went on to relate an abbreviated version of his stop in Cashelbanagh earlier today.  When he finished he found the younger man staring at him in shock.

“You’re a priest?”

“Why, yes.  A monsignor, to be exact.”

“That’s great!” he snapped, quaffing the rest of his ale.  “And you’re going to New York?  Just great!  That really caps my day!  No offense, but I hope we don’t run into each other.”

Without another word he rose and strode from Jim Cashman’s pub, leaving Vincenzo Riccio to wonder what he had said or done to precipitate such a hasty departure.

Perhaps Dan Fitzpatrick was an atheist.

‡

After a second pint of Murphy’s Vincenzo decided he’d brooded enough about miracles and unfriendly Americans.  He pushed himself to his feet and ambled into the night.

A thick cold fog had rolled up from the sea along the River Lee, only a block away, and was infiltrating the city.  Vincenzo was about to turn toward St. Patrick Street and make his way back to his hotel when he saw her.

She stood not two dozen feet away, staring at him.  At least he thought she was staring at him.  He couldn’t tell for sure because the cowled robe she wore pulled up around her head cast her face in shadow, but he could feel her eyes upon him.

His first thought was that she might be a prostitute, but he immediately dismissed that because there was nothing the least bit provocative about her manner, and that robe was anything but erotic.

He wanted to turn away but he could not take his eyes off her.  And then it was she who turned and began to walk away.

Vincenzo was compelled to follow her through the swirling fog that filled the open plaza leading to the river.  Strange... the lights that lined the quay silhouetted her figure ahead of him but didn’t cast her shadow.  Who was she?  And how did she move so smoothly?  She seemed to glide through the fog...toward the river...to its edge...

Vincenzo shouted as he saw her step off the bulkhead, but the cry died in his throat when he saw her continue walking with an unbroken stride...upon the fog.  He stood gaping on the edge as she canted her path to the right and continued walking downstream.  He watched until the fog swallowed her, then he lurched about, searching for someone, anybody to confirm what he had just seen.

But the quay was deserted.  The only witnesses were the fog and the River Lee.

Vincenzo rubbed his eyes and stumbled back toward the pub.  The doctors had told him to stay away from alcohol, that his liver couldn’t handle it.  He should have listened.  He must be drunk.  That was the only explanation.

Otherwise he could have sworn he’d just seen the Virgin Mary.

‡

The Judean Wilderness

Kesev sobbed.

He was still alive.

When will this END?

He’d tried numerous times before to kill himself but had not been allowed to die.  He’d hoped that this time it would work, that his miserable failure to guard the Resting Place would cause the Lord to finally despair of him and let him die.  But that was not to be.  So here was yet another failure—one more in a too-long list.

The jolt from the sudden shortening of the rope had knocked him unconscious but had left his vertebrae and spinal cord intact.  Its constriction around his throat had failed to strangle him.  So now he’d regained consciousness to find himself swinging gently in Sharav a dozen feet above the ground.

For a few moments he let tears of frustration run through the desert dust that coated his cheeks, then he reached into his pocket for his knife and began sawing at the rope above his head.

Moments later he was slumped on the ground, pounding his fists into the unyielding earth.

“Is it not over, Lord?” he rasped.  “Is that what this means?  Do You have more plans for me?  Do You want me to search out the Mother and return her to the Resting Place?  Is that what You wish?”

Kesev struggled to his feet and staggered to his Jeep.  He slumped over the hood.

That had to be it.  The Lord was not through with him yet.  Perhaps He would never be through with him.  But clearly He wanted more from him now.  He wanted the Mother back where she belonged and was not about to allow Kesev to stop searching for her.

But where else could he look?  She’d been smuggled out of Israel and now could be hidden anywhere in the world.  He had no clues, no trail to follow...

Except the Ferris woman.  Who was she?  Had that strange, unsettling nun on the plane been her, or someone pretending to be her?  And did it matter?  All he knew was that the Explorer he’d seen in the desert that day had been rented on her card.  There might be no connection at all.  The Mother could have been stolen days before then.

He gazed up into the cold, unblinking eye of the night.

“All right, Lord.  I’ll continue looking.  But I search now on my terms, my way.  I’ll find the Mother for You and bring her back where she belongs.  But you may not like what I do to the ones who’ve caused me this trouble.”

FIFTEEN

Manhattan

Dan finished tightening the last screw in the swivel plate.  He flipped the latch back and forth, watching with inordinate satisfaction how easily its slot slipped over the swivel eye.  He fitted the shackle of the brand new combination padlock through the eye.

“We’re in business, Carrie.”

She didn’t answer.  She was busy inside the coal room with the Virgin.  Or maybe busy wasn’t the right word.  Carrie was engrossed, preoccupied, fascinated, enraptured with the Virgin.

The Virgin...Dan had heard Carrie refer to the body or statue or whatever it was so often as “the Virgin” that he’d begun thinking of it that way himself.  Certainly easier than referring to it as the Whatever.

After an uneventful transatlantic trip, the Virgin had arrived in New York late last night.  He and Carrie had been on the docks first thing this morning to pick her up.  After passing through customs they spirited her crate through the front door to St. Joe’s basement, through the Loaves and Fishes kitchen, and down here to the subcellar.  The old coal furnace that used to rule this nether realm had been dismantled and carted off when the diocese switched the church to gas heat.  That left a wide open central space and a separate coal room that used to be fed by a chute from the alley.  Carrie had chosen the old coal room as the perfect hiding place.  It was ten by ten, the chute had been sealed up long ago, and it had a door, although the door had no lock.  Until now.

Dan opened the door and stuck his face inside.  He experienced an instant of disorientation, as if he were peering into the past, intruding upon an ancient scene from the Roman catacombs.  A functioning light fixture was set in the ceiling, but it was off.  Instead, flickering candlelight filled the old coal room, casting wavering shadows against the walls and ceiling.  A couple of days ago Dan had lugged one of the folding tables from the mission down here and placed it where Carrie had directed, and that had been just about the last he’d seen of her until this morning.  She’d spent every spare moment of the interval feverishly dusting, scrubbing, and dressing up the room, draping the table with a blanket, setting up wall sconces for the candles, appropriating flowers left behind in the church after weddings or funerals, making a veritable shrine out of the coal room.

A short while ago they’d opened the crate and he’d helped her place the Virgin’s board-stiff body on the table.  Carrie had been fussing with her ever since.

“I said, the latch is in place, Carrie.  Want to come see?”

She was bending over the body where it rested on the blanket-draped table, straightening her robe.  She didn’t look up.

“That’s all right.  I know you did a great job.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s a great job.” Dan leaned back and surveyed his work.  “Adequate is more like it.  Won’t keep out anybody really determined to get in, but it should deter the idly curious.”

“That’s what we want,” she said, straightening.  She turned toward him and held out her hand.  “Come see.”

Dan moved to her side and laid an arm across her shoulders.  A warm tingle spread over his skin as he felt her arm slip around his back.  This was the closest they’d been since leaving Israel.

“Look at her.  Isn’t she beautiful?”

Dan didn’t know how to answer that.  He saw the waxy body of an old woman with wild hair and mandarin fingernails, surrounded by candles and wilting flowers.  He knew Carrie was seeing something else.  Her eyes were wide with wonder and devotion, like a young mother gazing at her newborn first child.

“You did a wonderful job with this place.  No one would ever know it was once a coal room.”

“And no one should ever know otherwise.  This is our little secret, right?”

“Right.  Our little secret.  Our big secret is us.”  Dan turned and wrapped his other arm around her.  “And speaking of us...”

Carrie slipped from his embrace.  “No, Dan.  Not now.  Not here.  Not with...her.”

Dan tried to hide his hurt.  Just being in the same room with Carrie excited him.  Touching her drove him crazy.  Used to drive her crazy too.  What was wrong?

“When then?  Where?  Is your brother—?”

“Let’s talk about it some other time, okay?  Right now I’ve got a lot still left to do.”

“Like what?”

“I have to cut those nails, and fix her hair.”

“She’s not going on display, Carrie.”

“I know, but I want to take care of her.”

“She’s not a—”  Dan bit off the rest of the sentence.

“Not a what?”

He’d been about to say Barbie Doll but had cut himself off in time.

“Nothing.  She did fine in that cave with nobody fussing over her.”

“But she’s my responsibility now.”

Dan repressed a sigh.  “Okay.  But not your only responsibility.  We’ve still got meals to serve upstairs.  I’m sure she wouldn’t want you to let the guests down.”

“You go ahead.  I’ll be up in a few minutes.”

“Good.”  Dan wanted out of here.  The low ceiling, the dead flowers...the atmosphere was suddenly oppressive.  “You remember the lock combination?” “Twelve, thirty-six, fourteen.”

“Right.  See you upstairs.”

He watched Carrie, waiting for her to look his way, but she had eyes only for the Virgin.

Shaking his head, Dan turned away.  This wouldn’t last, he told himself.  Carrie would come around soon.  Once it seeped into her devotion-fogged brain that her Virgin was merely an inert lump, she’d return to her old self.

But there was going to be an aching void in his life until she did.

‡

Carrie listened to Dan’s shoes scuff up the stone steps as she pulled the zip-lock bag from her pocket and removed the scissors from it.

Poor Dan, she thought, looking down at the Virgin.  He doesn’t understand.

Neither did she, really.  All she knew was that everything had changed for her.  She could look back on her fourteen years in the order—fully half of her life—and understand for the first time what had brought her to the convent, what had prompted her to take a vow of chastity and then willfully break it.

“It was you, Mother,” she whispered to the Virgin as she began to trim the ragged ends of dry gray hair that protruded from under the wimple.  “I came to the order because of you.  You are the Eternal Virgin and I wanted to be like you.  Yet I could never be like you because my virginity was already gone...stolen from me.  But you already know the story.”

She’d spoken to the Blessed Virgin countless times in her prayers, trying to explain herself.  She’d always felt that Mother Mary would understand.  Now that they were face to face, she was compelled to tell her once more, out loud, just to be sure she knew.

“I wanted a new start, Mother.  I wanted to be born anew with that vow.  I wanted to be a spiritual virgin from that day forward.  But I couldn’t be.  No matter how many showers I took and scrubbed myself raw, no matter how many novenas I made and plenary indulgences I received, I still felt dirty.”

She slipped the hair trimmings into the plastic bag.  These cuttings could not be tossed into a dumpster or even flushed away.  They were sacred.  They had to remain here with the Virgin.

“I hope you can understand the way I felt, Mother, because I can’t imagine you ever feeling dirty or unworthy.  But the dirtiness was not the real problem.  It was the hopelessness that came with it—the inescapable certainty that I could never be clean again.  That’s what did me in, Mother.  I knew what your Son promised, that we have but to believe and ask forgiveness and we shall be cleansed.  I knew the words, I understood them in my brain, but in my heart was the conviction that His forgiveness was meant for everyone but Carolyn Ferris.  Because Carolyn Ferris had be involved in the unspeakable, the unthinkable, the unpardonable.”

She kept cutting, tucking the loose trimmed ends back under the Virgin’s wimple.

“I’ve been to enough seminars and read enough self-help books to know that I was sabotaging myself—I didn’t feel worthy of being a good nun, so I made damn sure I never could be one.  I regret that.  Terribly.  And even more, I regret dragging Dan down with me.  He’s a good man and a good priest, but because of me he broke his own vow, and now he’s a sinning priest.”

Carrie felt tears welling in her eyes.  Damn, I’ve got a lot to answer for.

“But all that’s changed now,” she said, blinking and sniffing.  “Finding you is a sign, isn’t it?  It means I’m not a hopeless case.  It means He thinks I can hold to my vows and make myself worthy to guard you and care for you.  And if He thinks it, then it must be so.”

She trimmed away the last vagrant strands of hair, then sealed them in the zip-lock bag.

“There.”  She stepped back and smiled.  “You look better already.”

She glanced down at the Virgin’s long, curved fingernails.  They were going to need a lot of work, more work than she had time for now.

“I’ve got to go now.  Got to do my part for the least of His children, but I’ll be back.  I’ll be back every day.  And every day you’ll see a new and better me.  I’m going to be worthy of you, Mother.  That is a promise—one I’ll keep.”

She just had to find the right way to tell Dan that the old Carrie was gone and he couldn’t have the new one.  He was a good man.  The best.  She knew he’d understand and accept the new her...eventually.  But she had to find a way to tell him without hurting him.

She placed the bag of clippings under the table that constituted the Virgin’s bier, then kissed her wimple and blew out the candles.  She snapped the combination lock closed and hurried upstairs to help with lunch.

‡

Carrie was adding a double handful of sliced carrots to the last pot of soup when she heard someone calling her name from the Big Room.  She walked to the front to see what it was.

Augusta, a stooped, reed-thin, wrinkled volunteer who worked the serving line three days a week, stood at the near end of the counter with Pilgrim.

“He says he’s got a complaint,” Augusta said, looking annoyed and defensive.

The guests often complained about Augusta, saying she was stingy with the portions she doled out.  Which was true.  She treated the soup and bread as if it were her own.  Carrie and Dan had been over this with her again and again: The idea here was to serve everything they made, then make more for the next meal.  But they couldn’t very well tell her she wasn’t welcome behind the counter anymore—they needed every helping hand they could find.

Carrie glanced around for Dan, hoping he could field this, but he was standing by the front door, deep in conversation with Dr. Joe.

“Preacher don’t want me to say nothin’, Sister,” Pilgrim said, “but he found this in his mouth while he was eating his soup and I think you should know about it.”

He held out his hand and in the center of his dirty palm lay a three-inch hair.

“I’m Preacher’s eyes, you know.”

“I know that,” Carrie said.

Everybody knew that.  Mainly because Pilgrim told anyone who would listen whenever he had a chance.  Preacher was blind and Pilgrim was his devoted disciple, leading him from park to stoop to street corner, wherever he could find a small gathering that might listen to his message of imminent Armageddon.

“I’m usually pretty good but this one slipped by me.  I kinda feel like I let him down.”

“Oh, I’m sure Preach doesn’t feel that way,” Carrie said, plucking the hair from his palm.  “But I do apologize for this, and tell him I’ll do my best to see that it doesn’t happen again.”

“Oh, no!” Pilgrim said, agitatedly waving his hands in front of her.  “You got me wrong.  It ain’t your fault.”  He pointed a finger at Augusta.  “It’s hers.  Look at that gray hair straggling all over the place, and that’s a gray hair Preacher found.  She’s supposed to be wearing a net.  I know ‘cause I useta work in a diner and we all hadda wear hair nets.”

“He has no right to say that, Sister,” Augusta snapped.

Just then the basement phone began ringing in the far corner of the kitchen.  Hilda Larsen went to get it.

“It’s for you, Sister,” Hilda called from inside.  “Your brother.”

Uh-oh, Carrie thought as she hurried back into the kitchen and took the receiver.  Brad never called her at Loaves and Fishes.  This could only mean that his American Express bill had arrived.

“Hi, Brad.  I can explain all those charges.”  Well, most of them, anyway.

“What charges?”

“On the card.  You see—”

“I didn’t get the bill yet, Car.  And whatever it is, don’t give it a second thought.”

“I went a bit overboard, Brad.”

“Carrie, I’ve got more money than I know what to do with and no one to spend it on.  So let’s not mention AmEx charges again.  That’s not why I called.  It’s about Dad.”

Carrie felt all the residual warmth from her hours with the Virgin this morning empty out of her like water down a drain.

“What about him?”

She asked only because it was expected of her.  She didn’t care a thing about that man.  Couldn’t.  The mere mention of him froze all her emotions into suspended animation.

“He passed out.  They had to move him to the hospital.  They say it’s his heart acting up again.”

Carrie said nothing as Brad paused, waiting for her reaction.  When the wait stretched to an uncomfortable length, he cleared his throat.

“He’s asking for you.”

“He’s always asking for me.”

“Yeah, but this time—”

“This time will be just like the last time.  He’ll get you all worked up thinking he’s going to die, get you and me going at each other, then he’ll come out of it and go back to the nursing home.”

“He’s changed, Carrie.”

“He’ll always be Walter Ferris.  He can’t change that.”

Brad sighed.  “You know, I wish you’d take one tiny bit of the care and compassion you heap upon those nobodies down there and transfer it to your own father.  Just once.”

“These nobodies never did to me what that man did.  It’s because of him that I’m down here with these nobodies.  We can both thank him for where we are.”

“I’ve managed to do okay.”

“Have you?”

Now it was Brad’s turn for silence.

Carrie wanted to ask him why he hadn’t been able to sustain a relationship.  It seemed every time he got close to a woman he backed off.  Why?  What was he afraid of?  That he was like his father?  That a little bit of that man hid within him?  And that if he had children of his own he might do what his father did?

But she couldn’t say that to Brad.  All she could say was, “I love you, brother.”

And she meant it.

“I love you too, Carrie.”

Suddenly she heard voices rising in the Big Room.

“I’ve got to go.  Call me soon.”

“Will do.”

As Carrie turned away from the phone, she saw Augusta coming toward her.

“Honestly, Sister.  That wasn’t my hair.  Mine’s long and thick.  That one Pilgrim gave you is short and fine.”

“It’s okay, Augusta.”  She brushed past the old woman.  “What’s going on in the Big Room?”

“Probably another fight.  You know how they are.”

But it wasn’t a fight.  The regulars—Rider, Dandy, Lefty, Dirty Harry, Poppy, Bigfoot, Indian, Stony, One-Thumb George—and a few of the newer ones were clustered around one of the long tables.  She saw Dan standing on the far side of the circle as Dr. Joe bent over Preacher who sat ramrod straight, holding his hands before his face.

“A miracle!” Pilgrim was screeching, dancing and gyrating among the tables of the Big Room.  “I always knew Preacher had the power, and now it’s come!  It’s a miracle!  A fucking miracle!”

Carrie pushed closer.

Preacher was staring at his hands, muttering.  “I can see!  Praise God, I can see!”

She stepped back and stared at the short strand of gray hair in her hand.  It hadn’t come from Augusta.  She recognized it now.  It was the same length and color as the stray strands Carrie had been trimming from the Virgin a short while ago.  It must have stuck to her sleeve downstairs and fallen into the soup as she was adding the ingredients.

A miracle...

She wanted to laugh, she wanted to cry, she wanted to grab Pilgrim’s hands and join him in a whirling dervish.

Oh, Pilgrim, she thought as she hurried back through the kitchen and down to the subcellar.  If only you knew how right you are!

Yes, it was a miracle.  And Carrie had a feeling it would not be the last.

‡

“Preacher can really see again,” Dan said for the third or fourth time.  Evening had come and they were cleaning up the Big Room after dinner.  “Not well, mind you.  He can recognize his hand in front of his face and not much more, but at least that’s something.  He’s been totally blind for forty years.”

Carrie had decided to hold off telling Dan about the piece of the Virgin’s hair in the soup.  He’d only go into his Doubting Thomas routine.  She’d wait till she had more proof.  But she couldn’t resist priming him for the final revelation.

She glanced around to make sure they were out of earshot of the volunteers in the kitchen.

“Do you think it’s a miracle?” she said softly.

Dan didn’t look up as he wiped one of the long tables.  “You know what I think about miracles.”

“How do you explain it then?”

“José says it might have been hysterical blindness all along, and now he’s coming out of it.  He’s scheduled him for a full eye exam tomorrow.”

“Well, far be it from me to disagree with Doctor Joe.”

Dan stopped in mid wipe and stared at her.  “Aw, Carrie.  Don’t tell me you think—”

“Yes!” she said in a fierce whisper.  “I think a certain someone has announced her presence.”

“Come on, Carrie—”

“You and José believe in your hysterical blindness, if you wish.  All I know is that Preacher began to see again within hours of a certain someone’s arrival.”

Dan opened his mouth, then closed it, paused, then shook his head.  “Coincidence, Carrie.”

But he didn’t sound terribly convinced.

Carrie couldn’t repress a smile.  “We’ll see.”

“We’ll see what?”

“How many ‘coincidences’ it takes to convince you.”

Fruitless Vigil in Tompkins  Square

Approximately 1,000 people gathered last night for a candlelight prayer vigil in Tompkins Square Park.  Surrounded by knots of curious homeless, many of whom call the park home, the predominantly female crowd prayed to the Virgin Mary in the hope that she would manifest herself in the park.

Sightings of a lone woman, described as “glowing faintly”, and identified as the Blessed Virgin, have been reported with steadily increasing frequency all over the Lower East Side during the past few weeks.

SIXTEEN

Manhattan

“Something bothering you, José?”

Dan and Dr. Joe ambled crosstown after splitting a sausage-and-pepper pizza and a pitcher of beer at Nino’s on St. Mark’s and Avenue A.  José had been unusually quiet tonight.

“Bothering me?  I don’t know.  Nothing bad or anything like that, just...I don’t know.”

“That’s the first time you’ve put that many words together in a row all night, and six of them were ‘I don’t know.’  What gives?”

José said, “I don’t know,” then laughed.  “I...aw hell, I guess I can tell you: I think two of my AIDS patients have been cured.”

Dan felt an anticipatory tightening in his chest and he wasn’t sure why.

“You’re sure?”

“It’s not just my diagnosis.  They were both anemic, both had Kaposi’s when I’d seen them in July.  They came in last week and their skin had cleared and their hematocrits were normal.  I sent them to Beekman for a full work up.  The results came back today.”

“And?”

“They’re clear.”

“Cured?”

Dan saw José’s head nod in the dark.  “Yep.  They’re now HIV neg.  Their peripheral smears are normal, their CD4 cell counts are normal, their skin lesions are gone.  Not a single goddamn trace that they were ever exposed to HIV.  Hell, they both used to be positive for hepatitis B surface antigen and now even that’s gone.”

José sounded as if he was going to cry.

“But how—?”

“Nothing I did.  Just gave them the usual cocktail, and let me tell you, man, they weren’t all that reliable about taking their meds.  Fucking miracle, that’s what it is.  Medical fucking miracle.”

Dan’s mouth went dry.  Talk of miracles did that to him lately.  So did talk of people seeing the Virgin Mary in his neighborhood.

“Miracle.  You mean like...Preacher?”

“I can’t say much about Preacher.  I’ve got no medical records on him from when he was blind, so I can’t say anything about the condition of his retinas when he couldn’t see.  All I can say is that his vision has improved steadily until it’s almost twenty-twenty now.  But...these two AIDS patients, they were documented cases.”

Dan sensed a certain hesitancy in José.

“I wouldn’t happen to know these two patients, would I?”

José hesitated, then sighed.  “Normally I wouldn’t tell you, but they’re going to be in all the medical journals soon, and from then on they’ll be news-show and talk-show commodities, so I guess it’s okay to tell you they’re both regulars at your Loaves and Fishes.  You’ll hear their names soon enough.”

Dan stumbled a step.

“Oh my God.”

“Well, you knew some of them had to be HIV positive.”

Dan tried to remember who hadn’t been around lately.

“Dandy and Rider?”

“You guessed it.”

“They had it but they’re cured?”

“Yep.  Both with a history of IV drug use, formerly HIV positive, now HIV neg.  You figure it out.”

Dan was trying to do just that.

He knew Carrie wouldn’t have to think twice about an explanation when she heard the news: the Virgin did it.

And how was he supposed to counter that?  Damned if he wasn’t beginning to think she might be right.  First Preacher gets his sight back, then people all over the area start sighting someone they think is the Virgin Mary, and now two of their regulars at St. Joe’s are cured of AIDS.

The accumulated weight of evidence was getting too heavy to brush off as mere coincidence.

He glanced at José and noticed he still looked glum.

“So how come you’re not happy?”

“Because when I gave Rider and Dandy the news they gave me all the credit.”

“So?”

“So I didn’t do anything.  And if they go around blabbing that Dr. Martinez can cure AIDS, it’s going to raise a lot of false hopes.  And worse, my little clinic is going to be inundated with people looking for a miracle.”

A miracle...that word again.

Dan clapped him on the shoulder, trying to lighten him up.

“Who knows.  Maybe you’ve got the healing touch.”

“Not funny, Dan.  I don’t have the resources to properly treat the people I’m seeing now.  If the clinic starts attracting crowds I don’t know what I’ll do.”  Suddenly he grinned.  “Maybe I’ll direct them all to Saint Joe’s Loaves and Fishes.  If they’re looking for a miracle, that’s the place to find it.”

A knot of dread constricted in Dan’s chest, stopping him in his tracks.

“Don’t even kid about that!”

José laughed.  “Hey, think about it: It all fits.  Preacher regained his sight there, and both Dandy and Rider are regulars.  Maybe the cure-all can be found at Loaves and Fishes.  Maybe Sister Carrie’s stirring some special magical ingredient into that soup of hers.”

Dan forced a smile.  “Maybe.  I’ll have to ask her.”

‡

Carrie held up two zip-lock bags.

“Here they are.  The magic ingredients.”

When he’d mentioned José’s remarks to her this morning, she’d smiled and crooked a finger at him, leading him down to the subcellar.  It was the first time he’d been down here since he’d carried in the Virgin.  After Carrie lit the candles, Dan saw that the Virgin looked different.  Her hair was neater, tucked away under her wimple, and those long, grotesque fingernails had been clipped off.  The air was suffused with the sweet scent of the fresh flowers that surrounded the bier.

Carrie then reached under her bier and produced these two clear plastic bags.

Dan took them from her and examined them.  One contained an ounce or so of a fine, off-white powder; the other was full of a feather-light gray substance that looked for all the world like finely chopped...hair.

He glanced back at Carrie and found her smiling, staring at him, her eyes luminous in the candle glow.

“What are these?” he said, hefting the bags.

“Hers.”

“I don’t get it.”

Carrie reached out and gently touched the bag of fine, gray strands.  “This one’s her hair.”  She then touched the bag with the powder.  “And this is what’s left of her fingernails.”

“Fingernails?”

“I trimmed her nails and filed the cuttings down to powder.”

“Why on earth...?”

Carrie explained about the strand of hair in Preacher’s soup, and how he’d begun to see again almost immediately after.

“But that was coincidence,” Dan said.  “It had to be.”

She trapped him with those eyes.  “Are you sure?”

“No.  I’m not sure.  I no longer know what I’m sure of or not sure of.  I haven’t been sure of much for a long time, and now I’m not even sure about the things I’ve been sure I couldn’t be sure of.”

Carrie started to laugh.

Dan shook his head.  “Sounds like a country-western song, doesn’t it?”  Then he too started to laugh.

“Oh, Lord,” Carrie said after a moment.  “When was the last time we laughed together?”

“Before Israel.”

Slowly, she sobered.  “That seems like so long ago.”

“Doesn’t it.”

Silence hung between them.

“Anyway,” Carrie finally said, “I’ve been dosing the soup with tiny bits of her hair and her ground-up fingernails every day since she arrived.”

Dan couldn’t help making a face.  “Carrie!”

“Don’t look at me like that, Dan.  If I put in a couple of snippets of hair I mix it with the rosemary.  If I use some fingernail, I rub it together with some pepper.  Tiny amounts, unnoticeable, completely indistinguishable from the regular spices.”

“But they’re not spices.”

“They are indeed!  You can’t deny that things have changed upstairs since the Virgin arrived.”

Dan thought about that and realized she was right.  In fact, strange things had been happening at the Loaves and Fishes during the past month or so.  Nothing so dramatic as the return of Preacher’s sight, but the place had changed.  Nothing that would be apparent to an outsider, but Dan knew things were different.

First off, the mood—the undercurrent of suspicion and paranoia that had prevailed whenever the guests gathered was gone.  They no longer sat hunched over their meals, one arm hooked around the plate while the free hand shoveled food into the mouth.  They ate more slowly now, and they talked.  Instead of arguments over who was hogging the salt or who’d got a bigger serving, Dan had actually heard civil conversation along the tables.

Come to think of it, he hadn’t had to break up a fight in two weeks—a record.  The previously demented, paranoid, and generally psychotic guests seemed calmer, more lucid, almost rational.  Fewer of them were coming in drunk or high.  Rider had stopped talking about finding his old Harley and had even mentioned checking out a Help Wanted sign he’d seen outside a cycle repair shop.

But the biggest change had been in Carrie.

She’d withdrawn from him.  It had always seemed to Dan that Carrie had room in her life for God, her order, St. Joe’s Loaves and Fishes, and one other.  Dan had been that one other for a while.  Now he’d lost her.  The Virgin had supplanted him in that remaining spot.

Yet try as he might he could feel no animosity.  She was happy.  He couldn’t remember seeing her so radiant.  His only regret was that he wasn’t the source of that inner light.  Part of him wanted to label her as crazy, deranged, psychotic, but then he’d have to find another explanation for the changes upstairs... and the cures.

He stepped past her to stare down at the prone, waxy figure.  She looked so much neater, so much more...attractive with her hair fixed and her nails trimmed.

“You think she’s responsible.”

“I know she is.”

Dan’s gaze roamed past the flickering candles to the flower-stuffed vases that rimmed the far side and clustered at the head and foot of the makeshift bier.

“You’ve done a wonderful job with her.  But how do you keep sneaking off with all these flowers?  Aren’t you afraid one of these trips somebody in the church is going to catch you and ask you what you’re up to?”

“One of what trips?  I haven’t borrowed any flowers from the church since she arrived.”

Dan turned back to the flowers—mums, daffodils, gardenias, gladiolus, their stalks were straight and tall, their blossoms full and unwrinkled—then looked at Carrie again.

“But these are...”

“The same ones I brought down the first day.”  Her smile was blinding.  “Isn’t it wonderful?”

Dan continued to stare into those bright, wide, guileless eyes, looking for some hint of deception, but he found none.  Suddenly he wished for a chair.  His knees felt rubbery.  He needed to sit down.

“My God, Carrie.”

“No.  Just His mother.”

That wasn’t what he needed to hear.  Things like this didn’t happen in the real world, at least not in Dan’s real world.  God stayed in His heaven and watched His creations make the best of things down here while priests like Dan acted as go-betweens.  There was no part in the script for His mother—especially not in the subcellar of a Lower East Side church.

“Is it her, Carrie?  Can it really be her?”

“Yes,” she said, nodding, beaming, unhindered by the vaguest trace of doubt.  “It’s her.  Can’t you feel it?”

The only thing Dan could feel right now was an uneasy chill seeping into his soul.

“What have we done, Carrie?  What have we done?”

AIDS Cures Linked To Virgin Mary

A prayer vigil outside St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church on the Lower East Side last night attracted over two thousand people.  Many of those attending proclaimed the recent well-publicized AIDS cures as miracles related to the sightings of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the area during the past month.  When asked about the connection, Fr. Daniel Fitzpatrick, associate pastor of St. Joseph’s, responded, “The Church has not verified the figure that has been sighted as actually representing the Virgin Mary, and certainly there is no established link between the figure and the AIDS cures.  Therefore I would strongly caution anyone with AIDS from abandoning their current therapy and coming down here looking for a miracle cure.  You might find just the opposite.”

(N. Y. Daily

News)

SEVENTEEN

Manhattan

“Damn that Pilgrim!” Dan said softly as the door shut behind the two CDC investigators.  “Why can’t he keep his big mouth shut?”

Poor Dan, Carrie thought as they stood together by the serving counter.  She repressed a smile and laid a gentle hand on his arm.

“He doesn’t know the trouble he’s causing.  Preacher’s his friend.  He was blind and now he can see.  He witnessed a miracle and he wants to tell the world about it.”

“And he seems to be doing just that—literally.”

“Let him.”

“Let him?  I have no choice.  And I wouldn’t care, but now he’s telling anybody who’ll listen that if they’re looking for a miracle cure, go to Loaves and Fishes!”

“And what if he does?”

“We just saw the result!  Two guys from the CDC asking us about what we’re serving the guests!  Wanting to know if we’re using any ‘unusual’ recipes!  Good God, I thought I was going to have a heart attack!”

Carrie had to laugh now.

“What’s so funny?” Dan said.

“You should have seen your face!  You started choking while you were reading off the ingredients in my seven-grain bread!”

Dan’s reluctant smile broke through.  “I did fine until he asked me about any ‘special additives!’  That was when I almost lost it.”

“You were very good.  Very calm.  The picture of innocence.”

“I hope so.  We don’t need a bunch of epidemiologists sniffing around.  I have visions of them doing these in-depth interviews with anyone around here who’s been cured of anything in the past few months and entering it all into a computer, then asking the computer to find the common denominator and having it spit out, Loaves and Fishes...Loaves and Fishes...Loaves and Fishes.”

“Oh, Dan.  Don’t worry so much.”

“I can’t help it, Carrie.  At the very least we have a smuggled artifact in the basement.  At the very most, if what you believe is true—”

“What I know is true.  And you know it’s true as well.”

Dan blinked, tightened his lips, and gave his head a quick shake.  Why wouldn’t he let his lips speak what he knew in his heart?

“At the very most,” he continued, “we’re sitting on something that could shake up all of Christianity and Judaism, and possibly all of Islam as well.”

“But no one but you and I will know,” Carrie said patiently.  How many times did she have to explain this to him?  “The Virgin’s existence was meant to be kept secret, and we are honoring that secret.”

“But just moments ago we had two government investigators here!”

“So?  Let’s just suppose that when they’d asked you about any ‘special additives,’ you’d told them, ‘Oh, yes.  I almost forgot.  We’ve got the Virgin Mary stashed away in the subcellar and we’re adding smidges of her finely-ground hair and fingernails to the soup.’  What do you think they’d put in their report?”

Dan sighed.  “Okay.  You’ve got a point.  But still...”

She reached across the counter and grasped his hand.

“Have faith, Dan.  We’re not alone in this.  Everything’s going to work out.  Just believe.”

Dan looked into her eyes and squeezed her hand in return.

“I used to believe in us, and look what happened to that.”

Carrie’s heart sank.  Not this again.

“Dan...we’ve been through this already.  Something bigger than you and I has come into our lives and we have to put our own wants and desires aside.  You said you understood.”

“I do.  At least partially.  But even if I understood fully, I’d still be hurting.  I haven’t been able to put out the fire so easily.”

But you must, she thought, hurting for him.  You must.

“Don’t the miracles make it easier?” she said, hoping to see the pain fade in his eyes.  “Don’t they make you feel a part of something glorious?”

“The cures are wonderful.”

“And they happened because of us!  The blind see, the terminally ill are cured, the deranged become lucid.  Because we brought her here.”

“I just hope those same miracles aren’t our downfall.  Look what’s happening around us.  People are seeing the Virgin Mary everywhere, the streets are acrawl with epidemiologists by day and Mary-hunters by night, there’s a candlelight vigil on every other corner, and every AIDS patient in the city seems to be trying to move to the Lower East Side.  It’s getting crazier by the minute out there.  It all seems to be building toward something.  But what?  And if someone puts all the pieces together, we may find ourselves in big trouble, a lot more trouble than we can handle.”

Carrie just shook her head.  Didn’t Dan know?  Couldn’t he feel it?  Everything was going to be fine.

‡

She is here.

Kesev had sensed that the instant his flight had touched down at JFK.  Now he sat on a filthy bench in a litter-strewn park named after Sara D. Roosevelt, whoever she was.  On the far side of the chainlink fence, across Forsythe Street, stretched a row of dilapidated houses, worse than in the poorest sections of the Arab Quarter in Jerusalem, except for the brightly colored and well kept building on the corner, the only clean structure on the block.  Kesev had found it especially interesting because of the six-pointed star of David in the circular window near the top of its front gable.  He’d thought it a temple at first, but had been confused by the inscription over the entrance: Templo Adventista del Septimo

But much closer at hand—directly in front of him—was a hoarse-voiced street preacher.  Lacking anything better to do, Kesev listened to his rant.

“Forget not what Saint Paul said to the Thessalonians: ‘The Day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night.’  The End Times are soon upon us.  First there will come the Rapture, then the Tribulation, and then the Son of God will come again.  But only those who believe, only those who are saved will be caught up in the Rapture and spared the Tribulation.  As Paul said to his church: ‘But you, brothers, are not in darkness that that day will overcome you like a thief...For God has not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain deliverance by our Lord Jesus Christ!’  Heed those words.  Repent, believe, be not caught unprepared!”

“Amen, brothers!” cried his helper or disciple or whatever one might call the little man who followed him around like a puppy.  “Amen!  Preacher should know!  Preacher was blind and now he can see!  He sees everything!”

“First will come war—and that is already here.  Then will come plague and famine and plague—listen to the news and you’ll know that a plague is crouched in the wings, waiting to spring—followed by worldwide starvation.  There will be a great shaking of the earth, the skies will darken, the seas will die, the river Jordan shall run red.”

What nonsense is this? Kesev thought irritably.  While I suffer the frustration of my fruitless search for the Mother, must I also suffer the words of fools and madmen?  If he doesn’t shut up I will wring his neck.  And that of his prancing disciple as well.

Weeks here and no luck.  Roaming these mean, sinister streets at night, hearing of the apparition, rushing to its reported location, always too late to see it.  The frustration was making him ill tempered, building to a murderous rage.  If something didn’t break soon...

She must be aware that I am here.  Why is she toying with me?

“Repent, brothers and sisters,” Preacher said.  “Repent and take Jesus as your Lord.  For the dark End Times are soon upon us, followed by the dawn of the Second Coming of the Lord!”

“Listen to him!” the little sidekick said.  “Listen!”

But the half-dozen people who had paused a moment to listen to the raggedy man had heard it all before, so they moved on.  And with no audience, the man called Preacher and his lone disciple moved on as well.

Leaving Kesev and a thin, sickly-looking old man sharing the bench.

Good riddance, Kesev thought.

‡

Monsignor Vincenzo Riccio shifted his weight on the bench as he watched the Preacher shuffle off.  His wasted buttocks offered no padding against the hard, rough planked surface.  He wanted to get up and continue his search for the vision, but he didn’t know which way to go in the fading light.

Fading like my body, he thought.  Like my life.  Slowly, steadily, inexorably.

He was beginning to think his chance to see the vision again would never come.  He’d been traveling down from the Vatican mission to the Lower East Side night after night, hoping, praying, beseeching God and Jesus and Mary herself to honor him with the vision once more, just once more before the cancer took him.  It had become a contest of sorts, a race between the tumor and his determination to last until he saw her again.

He glanced at the bearded man a few feet to his right.

“Do you think he’s right?” he said.

The bearded man started, as if surprised that someone would speak to him.  Most New Yorkers were shocked initially when a stranger like Vincenzo opened a conversation with them.

“Sorry.  Do I think who is right?”

A strange accent.  Middle Eastern, certainly, but where?  The features framed by the beard and dark hair were Semitic.  A Palestinian?

“That preacher.  Do you think we’re headed for the Second Coming?”

“You mean, the Second Coming of the Master?”

Vincenzo wondered at this fellow’s use of the term, “the Master.”  Surely he was referring to Christ.  Who else could be expected at the Second Coming.  But it was such an archaic reference, the way the early church referred to Jesus.

“The Second Coming of Jesus, yes.  Do you—?”

The bearded man shot to his feet.  “Good-bye.  I must be going.”

“If you must.  Perhaps we’ll meet some other time.”

“I do not think so.”

He walked off.

Vincenzo wondered if he was another “Mary-hunter,” as one of the local papers had dubbed the hordes of faithful roaming the Lower East Side streets in search of the Blessed Virgin.

Perhaps, perhaps not, Vincenzo thought as he pushed himself to his feet.  But certainly something strange about that fellow. Not very friendly, which he supposed was to be expected in New York, but this fellow was almost furtive.

As he crossed Pearl Street, a man ran out of an alley, frantically waving his arms in the dusk.

“OhmyGod!  OhmyGod!  I think I saw her!  I think it’s her!”

Vincenzo’s heart leapt.  “Where?”

As the fellow pointed toward the black maw of the alley behind him, Vincenzo tried in vain to make out his features in the dusky light.

“Back there!  She was just standing there, glowing.”

“Show me,” Vincenzo said.  “Please show me!”

“Sure,” the fellow said, waving him to follow.  “Come on!”

An alarm clanged faintly in a corner of Vincenzo’s brain, but his mind was too suffused with glorious anticipation to pay it proper heed.

The darkness of the alley swallowed him.  He saw nothing.

“Where?”

He was shoved roughly from behind and fell to his knees on the garbage strewn pavement.  Fear pounded through Vincenzo as he realized he was being mugged.  He’d heard about the predators who’d begun stalking the defenseless Mary-hunters.  The papers had dubbed them “Holies-rollers.”  He began shouting for help until a heavy boot slammed into his ribs and drove the wind out of him.

“Shuddup, asshole, an’ gimme your wallet!”

Vincenzo shouted again and was kicked again.  The mugger grabbed his wrist and pulled off his watch.

“Where’s your wallet?  Gimme your fuckin’ wallet or I cut you!”

Vincenzo was reaching for his back pocket when he heard a groan above him.  He heard scuffling feet, and then a heavy weight slammed onto the pavement next to him.

“Did he stab you?  Do you need a hospital?”

Vincenzo recognized the accent—the little bearded fellow who’d been sitting on the bench with him moments ago.

“No.  I’m only bruised.  Could you help me up, perhaps?”

He raised his hand and felt another grasp it and pull him to his feet.

Immediately the man began to move off.

“Wait.  I haven’t thanked you.  There must be something—”

“You can say nothing of this,” the fellow said, stopping and turning.  “That will be thanks enough.”

“But people should know!  You’re a hero!”

“That man behind you will be dead before help arrives.  I am a stranger in this country.  I do not wish to be arrested.”

“What did you do to him?”

“My knife did to him what his knife was going to do to you.”

“But why?”

“I needed to.”

Weak and trembling, Vincenzo leaned against a wall and silently watched the stranger hurry off.  The parting words turned over in his mind.  I needed to.  Something about the way he’d said that...

Needed to what?  Help somebody...or stab somebody?

He turned for one final look into the alley that might have been his grave and saw her.

She was only a few feet away, moving closer...flowing toward him...her faint glow a beacon in the black hole of the alley.  Her robes were the same as in Cork, only now he was close enough to make out some of her features.  The tears in his eyes blurred them but he thought he detected a hint of a smile as she looked at him.

“It’s you!” he sobbed, overcome by an unplumbed longing within.  “I’ve been searching for you.  I knew I’d find you again!”

She flowed closer without slowing...closer...

Vincenzo backed up a step but she never slowed her approach.  It was as if she didn’t see him.  When she was within inches he cried, “Stop!” but she continued her irresistible course, pressing against him—but he felt nothing.  She had no substance. And then his vision was filled with light that blotted out the alley and the street and the city, light all around, light within him...

Within him...

The apparition had merged with him.  Was he within her or was she within him?

He froze, he sizzled, dazzling spots flashed and swelled and danced before his eyes, he floated, he plummeted...

And then the light faded and the city night filled his eyes again.  He whirled and saw the apparition directly behind him, flowing away.

She walked...right...through...me!

And then she began to fade.  Within seconds Vincenzo was alone again.  The wonder that filled him also began to fade as the pain began, searing bolts of agony lancing through his chest and abdomen, doubling him over, driving him to his knees.

IN THE PACIFIC

7^o N, 150^o W

The clouds and wind have organized into a pocket of turbulence with sharply demarcated borders.  The pocket begins to drift eastward, drawing warm moist air up from the ocean surface into its high, cool center where the moisture condenses into droplets.  Thunder rumbles and lightning flashes as rain and wind whip the churning ocean surface to a froth.  The storm swells as it accelerates its eastward course.

EIGHTEEN

Manhattan

“Okay, Monsignor.  Another deep breath, and hold this one.”

Vincenzo Riccio filled his lungs while Dr. Karras’s fingers probed his abdomen under the lower right edge of his rib cage.  The young oncologist’s normally tanned-looking skin was relatively pale today.  The overhead fluorescents of the examining room reflected off the fine sheen of perspiration on his forehead.

“Damn!” he muttered as his fingers probed more deeply under Vincenzo’s ribs.

“Something wrong?” Vincenzo said, exhaling at last.

“No.  I mean, yes.  I mean...”

Vincenzo sat up and pulled down his undershirt.

“I don’t understand.”

Karras ran a hand through his short black hair. “Neither do I.”

“Perhaps you’d better tell me the problem, Doctor.  I think I deserve to know.”

The examination had started out routinely enough, with Vincenzo arriving at the outpatient cancer clinic, reading in the waiting room until his name was called, and then being examined by Dr. Karras.  But after examining him just as he had now, Karras had stepped over to the chart and pulled out yesterday’s blood test results.  After checking those for what seemed like an unduly long time and shuffling through the sheaf of previous reports, he examined Vincenzo’s abdomen again, then sent him for a CT scan of the liver, with comparison to the previous study.

“Stat,” he’d said into the phone.  “Double stat.”

So Vincenzo had allowed himself to be swallowed by the metal gullet of the scanner where his liver could be radiographically sliced and diced, and now he was back again on the examining table.  He had an inkling as to the nature of Dr. Karras’s discomfiture, but dared not voice it...dared not even think it.

“The problem is—”

The intercom beeped.  “Doctor Weiskopf is here.”

“Weiskopf?” Karras said.  “From radiology?  What’s—?  Oh, shit.  Excuse me.”  He all but leapt for the examining room door.

A few moments later he was back, trailing in his wake a tall, bearded man whom he introduced as Dr. Weiskopf.  He looked about fifty and wore a yarmulke; a large manila x-ray envelope was tucked under his left arm.

“I’ve never met a walking miracle,” Weiskopf said softly as they shook hands.

Vincenzo suddenly felt weak.  “Miracle?”

“What else can you call it?  I looked at your scan from today, then called up your initial scan from July, and I said to myself, Moshe, a trick this Karras kid is playing on you, trying to make a fool of you by asking you to compare the very sick liver of one man to the perfectly healthy liver of another.  And then I spied an osteophyte—doctorese for a bone spur—on one of the vertebrae of the new scan; much to my shock, there was the very same spur on the old scan.  So I had to come and see this man for myself.”

Vincenzo looked from Weiskopf to Karras.  “What...what’s he saying?”

“He’s saying your liver scan’s normal, Monsignor.”

“You mean the tumor’s shrinking?”

“Shrinking?” Weiskopf said.  “It’s gone!  Pfffft!  Like it was never there.  On your first scan your liver was, if you’ll pardon the term, Swiss-cheezed with tumors—”

“Nodular,” Karras added.  “And half again it’s normal size,”

“But now it’s perfectly homogeneous.  Not even a little fatty degeneration.”

“And it’s back to normal size,” Karras said.  “I can barely feel it anymore.”

“Is that what you were doing to me?”  Vincenzo felt giddy and dizzy, wanting to laugh or cry or both, wanting to fall to his knees in prayer but struggling to maintain his composure.  “For a while there I thought you were trying to feel my spine from the front.”

Karras smiled weakly.  “Last week your liver was big and nodular.  Your liver enzymes were climbing.  Now...”

“Maybe we’re onto something with this new protocol,” Weiskopf said.

Karras was shaking his head, staring at Vincenzo.  “No.  The protocol’s a bust.  We haven’t seen significant tumor regression with anyone.”

Weiskopf tapped his x-ray envelope.  “Until now.”

“Uh-uh.” Karras was still shaking his head and staring.  “Even if it were the protocol, tumor regression would be gradual.  A slow shrinking of the tumors.  And even in a best-case scenario we’d be left with a battered and scarred but functioning liver.  The Monsignor’s CT shows a perfectly healthy liver.  Almost as if he’d had a transplant.”

“I can’t explain it,” Weiskopf said.

“Maybe you already did,” Vincenzo said.  “It’s a miracle.”

Vincenzo was regaining his inner composure now.  He hadn’t been totally unprepared for this.  After the apparition had passed through him three nights ago, he’d been wracked with horrific pain for a few moments, and then it had passed, leaving him weak and sweaty.  He’d staggered back to his quarters at the mission where he fell into an exhausted sleep.  But when he awakened early the next morning he’d felt better than he had in years.  And each passing day brought renewed strength and vigor.  A power had touched him outside that alley.  He’d been changed inside.  He’d wondered how, why.  He’d prayed, but he’d dared not hope...

Until now.

A miracle...

The doctors’ smiles were polite but condescending.

“A figure of speech, Monsignor,” Weiskopf said.

Karras cleared his throat.  “I’d like to admit you for a day or two, Monsignor.  Do a full, head-to-toe work-up to see if we can get a handle on this and...”

Vincenzo shook his head as he slipped off the examining table and reached for his cassock.

“I’m sorry, but I have no time for that.”

“Monsignor, something extraordinary has happened here.  If we can pin this down, who knows how many other people we can help?”

“You will find nothing useful in examining me,” he said as he fastened his Roman collar.  “Only confusion.”

“You can’t say that.”

“I wish it were otherwise.  But unfortunately what happened to me cannot be applied to your other cases.  At least not in a hospital or clinic setting.”

“Where then?”

“I do not know.  But I’m going to try and find out.”

Vincenzo was returning to the Lower East Side.  Something was drawing him back.

‡

“Y’soup’s goin’ cold, guy.  Ain’t y’gonna eat it?”

Emilio glanced at the scrawny little man to his right—bright eyes crinkled within a wrinkled face framed by a mass of gray hair and beard matted with food and dirt; a gnarled finger with a nail the color of asphalt pointed to the bowl that cooled before him on the table.

“Do you want it?” Emilio said.

This was Emilio’s third meal at the church-basement soup kitchen called Loaves and Fishes and so far he’d managed to get through each time without having to eat a thing.

“Well, if you ain’t gonna be eatin’ it, it’d sure be a sin to waste it.”

Emilio switched bowls with the old man, trading his full one for an empty.  He placed his slice of bread on the other man’s plate as well.

“Ain’tcha hungry?” the old man said, bending over the fresh bowl and adding his slurps to the chorus of guttural noises around them.

“No.  Not really.”  He’d had a big breakfast in the East Village before walking over to St. Joseph’s.  “I’m not feeling well lately.”

“Yeah?  Well, then, this is the place to be.”  The old man leaned closer and spoke out of the side of his mouth.  “Miracles happen here.”

“So I’ve heard.”

Talk of miracles had brought him to Loaves and Fishes.

Emilio had been in town a week and a half and hadn’t uncovered a thing.  And didn’t expect to.  A waste of time as far as he was concerned.  But the opinion of Emilio Sanchez did not count in this matter.  The Senador wanted him here, sniffing about, turning over any rocks the CDC might miss, and so here he was.  The Senador was receiving copies of the official CDC reports as they were filed.  What he wanted from Emilio was the unofficial story, “the view from street level,” as the Senador had put it.

To do that, Emilio had rented a room in one of the area’s seedy residential hotels, stopped taking showers, and let his beard grow.  He’d picked up some thrift-shop clothes and begun wandering the Lower East Side, posing as a local.

And it was as a local that he’d run into someone named Pilgrim who ranted on about his blind friend Preacher who’d begun to see at a place called Loaves and Fishes, and how all the men who’d been cured of AIDS used to come to Loaves and Fishes.

And so now Emilio came to Loaves and Fishes.

Not that he suspected to find anything even vaguely supernatural going on, but there was always the chance that the place might be frequented by someone pedaling a drug or a folk medicine that might have been responsible for the now-famous AIDS cures.

But he’d found nothing here.  Just a crowd of hungry losers stuffing their faces with anything edible they could lay their hands on.  No fights, which struck Emilio as unusual with this sort of group.  Maybe they were just too busy eating.  Nothing special about the staff, either.  Mostly lonely old biddies filling up their empty days toiling in what they probably thought was service to mankind, plus a beautiful young nun who spent too much of her time in the kitchen.

And a young priest who seemed to be in charge.  Emilio had been startled to recognize him as the same priest the Senador had chewed up and spit out in front of the Waldorf last spring.  He doubted the priest would recognize him, but just the same, Emilio kept his head down whenever he came around.

Disgusted, he decided to leave.  Nothing here.  No miracles of any kind, medical or otherwise.  As he rose to his feet, he heard the priest say he was running back to the rectory for something, but instead of leaving through the front of the room, he used a door in the rear of the kitchen.

Emilio wove through the maze of long tables and hurried up the steps to the street.  As he ambled along, blinking in the sun’s glare and trying to look aimless, he glanced down the alley between the church and the rectory.  He stopped.  Hadn’t he seen the priest go out a door in the kitchen?  He’d assumed it led up to street level.  But there was no corresponding door in the alley.  Where had the priest gone if he hadn’t returned to the rectory?

He looked up at the rectory and was startled momentarily to see the priest’s blond head pass a window.  Emilio smiled.  An underground passage.  How convenient.  He supposed there were all sorts of passages between these old buildings.

He walked on, taking small satisfaction in having cleared up a mystery, no matter how inconsequential.  Emilio didn’t like mysteries.

Further along he passed a man wearing a white lab coat and holding an open brief case before him.  The briefcase was lined with rows of three-ounce bottles.

“Hey, buddy!  You got the sickness?”

Emilio looked at him and the guy’s eyes lit with sudden recognition.  He backed up two steps.

“Oh, shit.  Hey, sorry.  Never mind.”

Emilio walked on without acknowledging him.

How could he learn anything, or even make sense of anything in this carnival atmosphere?  The entire area seemed to have gone mad.  At night people wandered about in droves carrying candles and chanting the Rosary and seeing the Virgin Mary everywhere.  Hucksters were set up on every corner selling “I (heart symbol) Mary-hunting” badges, “Our Lady of the Lower East Side” T-shirts, Virgin Mary statues, slivers of the True Cross, rosaries, and sundry other religious paraphernalia.

Quick-buck grifters and con artists had moved in too.  Emilio had already had run-ins with a few of them, and the guy he’d just passed had been the first.  He’d approached Emilio just as he’d started to today, asking him if he had “the sickness”—the local code for AIDS.

Curious, Emilio had said, “What if I do?”

With that the guy had launched into a spiel about his cure-all tonic, claiming his elixir, “Yes, the stuff right in these bottles you see before you here,” was the stuff that had cured the AIDS cases everyone was talking about.

Emilio had listened awhile, then pushed him into a corner and knocked him around until he admitted that he hadn’t even come to the city until he’d read about the cures.

Emilio had similar run-ins with a number of the snake-oil salesmen he’d come across and under pressure the stories were all the same: charlatans preying on the weak, the sick, and the desperate.

Not that Emilio cared one way or the other, he simply didn’t want to bring one of their potions back to Paraiso and look like a fool in the eyes of the Senador.

This whole trip seemed a fool’s errand.

And yet...

A feeling was in the air...and in himself...a twinge in his gut, a vague prickling at the back of his neck, a sense that these littered streets, these leaning, tattered buildings hid a secret.  Even the air felt heavy, pregnant with...what?  Dread?  Anticipation?  A little of both, maybe?

Emilio shook it off.  The Senador had not sent him here for his impressions of the area; he wanted facts.  And whatever it was that was raising his gooseflesh, Emilio doubted it would be of any use to the Senador and Charlie.

But something was going on down here.

‡

Vincenzo Riccio stood in the dusk on the sidewalk in front of St. Joseph’s church.  He did not stare up at its Gothic facade, but at the doorway that led under its granite front steps.  People carrying candles were beginning to gather on those steps.  They carried rosaries and clustered around an elderly woman in a wheelchair who was preparing them for a prayer meeting tonight.   Vincenzo paid them little heed.

He had wandered the Lower East Side all day, tracing a spiral path from the Con-Ed station by the FDR, following a feeling, an invisible glow that seemed to be centered in the front of his brain, pulling him.  Where or why it was drawing him, he could not say, but he gave himself over to the feeling, allowed it to lead him in shrinking concentric circles to this spot.

And now he was here.  The invisible glow, the intangible warmth, the only warm spot in the city lay directly before him, somewhere within this church.

In the course of the weeks he had spent down here searching for the vision, Vincenzo had passed St. Joseph’s numerous times.  He had crossed himself as he’d come even with its sanctuary, and even had stopped in once to say a prayer.  But he had not been struck by anything especially important about the place.  A stately old church that, like its neighborhood, had seen better days.

Now it seemed like...home.

But what precisely was it that he had followed here?  He had no doubt that the strange sensation was connected to the apparition that had touched him with ecstasy and cleansed him of the malignancy that had been devouring him.  Neither did he doubt that the apparition was a visitation of the Blessed Virgin.  A true visitation.  Not an hallucination, not a wish fulfillment, not a publicity stunt.  He had seen, he had been touched, he had been healed.  This was the real thing.  His wish had been granted: He had witnessed a miracle before his death.  But as a result of that miracle, his death was no longer imminent.  He had been granted extra time.  And he’d used some of that extra time to find this place.

Why?  What was so special about this St. Joseph’s church?  What significance could it have for the Virgin Mary?  It was built on land that had been an undeveloped marsh until a millennium and a half after the birth of Christianity.  Vincenzo did not know of any sacred relics housed here.

And yet...

Something was here.  The same warm glow that had suffused his entire being a few nights ago seemed to emanate from this building.  Not from where he would have expected—from the sanctuary of the church itself—but from its lower level.  From the basement which appeared to be some sort of soup kitchen.

What could be here?  The remains of some American saint unrecognized by the Church?  Was that the reason behind the Blessed Mother’s visitations?

Inside...it’s inside.

Vincenzo was drawn forward.  Why shouldn’t he go in?  After all, he was wearing his cassock and collar.  Who would stop a priest from entering a church?  Especially a monsignor on a mission from the Holy See.  Yes.  Hadn’t the Vatican itself asked him to investigate the reports of visitations in this parish?  That was precisely what he was doing.

As he descended the short flight of stone steps he passed under a hand-painted sign that read “Loaves and Fishes.” He pushed through a battered door and entered a broad room lined with long tables and folding chairs.  Toward the rear, a serving counter.  And beyond that, a kitchen.

Further inside...

Feeling as if he were in a dream, he skirted the tables and moved toward the kitchen.  A growing excitement quivered in his chest.  He heard voices, running water, and clinking crockery from the kitchen.  He rounded the corner and came upon three women of varying shapes, sizes, and ages busily scrubbing pots, plates, and utensils.  The big, red-cheeked one glanced up and saw him.

“Sorry, we’re closed until—oh, sorry, Father.  I thought you were one of the guests.  Are you looking for Father Dan?”

Vincenzo had no idea who Father Dan was.

“Is he the pastor?”

“No.  Father Brenner is the pastor.  Father Dan is the associate pastor.  He went back to the rectory about half an hour ago.”

Down...it’s beneath your feet.

“Is there a basement here?”

“This is the basement, Father,” another woman said.

“But there’s a furnace room below here,” said the thinnest and oldest of the three.

Vincenzo saw a door in the rear corner and moved toward it.

“Not that one,” said the old woman.  “That leads to the rectory.  “There’s another door on the far side of the refrigerator there.”

Vincenzo changed direction, brushing past them, unable to fight the growing urgency within him.

So close...so close now.

He pulled the door open.  A sweet odor wafted up from the darkness below.

Flowers.

As his eyes adjusted, Vincenzo made out a faint glow from the bottom of the rutted stone steps.  He started down, dimly aware of the women’s voices behind him speaking of Father Dan and something about a Sister Carrie.  Whether they were speaking to him or to each other he neither knew nor cared.  He was close now...so close.

At the bottom he followed the light to the left and came upon a broad empty space with a single naked bulb glowing from the ceiling.

No...this can’t be it...there’s got to be more here than an empty basement.

Off to his left...a voice, humming.  He followed the sound around a corner and found the door to a smaller room standing open.  As he stepped inside, his surroundings became more dream like.

I’m here...this is the place...I’ve come home...

Candlelight flickered off the walls and low ceiling of a room that seemed alive with sweet-smelling blossoms.  He saw a woman there, her back was to him and she was humming as she straightened the folds of the robes draped around some sort of statue or sculpture recumbent on—

And then Vincenzo saw the glow.  He recognized that glow, knew that glow.  The same soft, pale luminescence had enveloped the apparition.  He could not be mistaken.  Hadn’t it touched him, been one with him for a single glorious instant?  How could he forget it?  He realized then that this was no statue or sculpture before him.  This was a human body laid out on a makeshift bier.

But whose body?

Suddenly Vincenzo knew, and the realization was like a physical blow, staggering him, numbing him, battering his consciousness until it threatened to tear loose from its moorings and...simply...drift.

This was no holy relic, no unsung, uncanonized saint.  This was her!

He knew it and yet a part of him stubbornly refused to accept it.  Impossible!  Tradition held that she was assumed body and soul into Heaven.  And even if tradition were wrong, even if her body had remained preserved for two thousand years, she would not—could not—be here in this church basement in Lower Manhattan.  It defied all reason, all belief, all common sense.

Can it be her?  Can it truly be her?

As he lurched forward he heard a voice speaking.  His own.  In his native tongue.

‡

“Puo essere lei?  Puo essere veramente lei?”

Carrie cried out in shock and fear at the sound of the strange voice behind her.  She turned and saw a man in black silhouetted in the light from the door, staggering toward her.  Reflexively, she began to dodge aside, but stopped and forced herself to stand firm.  Anyone trying to get to the Virgin would have to go through her first.

Then she saw his collar.  A priest.

“Father?”

He didn’t seem to hear.  He continued forward, trembling hands folded before him as if in prayer, eyes fixed on the Virgin as his expression twisted through a strange mixture of confusion, pain, and ecstasy.

“Puo essere lei?”

She didn’t understand the priest’s words, but the devotion in his eyes caused her insides to coil with alarm.

He knows! she thought.  Somehow he knows!

Sensing he meant no harm, Carrie eased aside and let him approach.  Her mind raced as she watched him gaze down at the Virgin.  No...obviously he meant no harm, but his mere presence was a catastrophe.  No matter what his intentions, he was going to ruin everything.

“Who are you?”

He didn’t seem to hear, only continued to stare down at the Virgin.

“Who are you, Father?”  This time she touched his arm.

He started and half turned toward her, tearing his eyes away from the Virgin at the last possible second.  Carrie hadn’t realized how old and thin he looked until now.

“It’s her, isn’t it,” he said in hoarse, accented English, and Carrie’s heart sank as she searched but found no hint of a question in his tone.  “It’s truly her!”

“Who do you mean, Father?” she said, hoping against hope that he’d give the wrong answer.

But instead of answering in words, he knelt before the Virgin, made the sign of the cross, and bowed his head.

That was more than enough answer for Carrie.  She began to shake.

I’m going to lose her.  They’re going to take her away from me!

At that moment she heard the scuff of hurried footsteps out in the old furnace room, then Dan dashed in.  He skidded to a halt when he saw the figure in black kneeling before the bier, then stared at Carrie, alarmed, confused, breathing hard.

“Hilda called me over...said there was a strange priest...”  He glanced at the newcomer.  “Who...how?”

Carrie shook her head.  “I don’t know.”

Dan stood in the center of the room, looking indecisive for a moment, then he stepped forward and laid a hand on the other priest’s shoulder.

“I’m Father Daniel Fitzpatrick, Father, associate pastor here, and I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

The older man turned his head to the side, then rose stiffly to his feet.  He stared at the Virgin a moment longer, then turned toward Carrie and Dan and drew himself to his full height.

“I am Monsignor Vincenzo Riccio.  From Rome.  From the Vatican.”

Carrie stifled a groan as she heard Dan mutter, “Oh, God.  You’re the priest from the pub!”

“You must explain this,” Msr. Riccio said, gesturing toward the Virgin.  “How...how is this possible?”

“How is what possible?” Dan said.

The older priest raised a hand.  “Please.  There is no point in trying to fool me.  I was touched by her, healed by her.  I know this is the Blessed Mother.  Do you understand?  I do not believe it, think it, or feel it, I know it.  What I do not know is why she is hidden away in this dingy cellar, and how she came to be here.  Will you please explain that to me, Father Fitzpatrick.”

Dan held the monsignor’s stare for a moment, then turned to Carrie and introduced her as Sister Carolyn Ferris.

“Carrie, this is your show.  What do you want to do?  Whatever you decide, I’m with you all the way.”

Carrie felt as if she were perched on the edge of a precipice...during an earthquake.  Her mind was numb with the shock of being discovered.  She could see no sense in lying.  The monsignor already knew the core truth.  Why not tell him the details.

And suddenly hope was alive within her.

Yes!  The details.  Maybe if he knew how the Virgin had been hidden away in a cave much like this subcellar room, he’d realize that she had to remain hidden...right here.

“It began with a scroll Father Fitzpatrick received as a gift...”

‡

“I see,” Vincenzo said softly as Sister Carolyn finished her story, closing with the details of the cures and miracles at the soup kitchen one floor above.

He had been too fascinated to interrupt her long monologue more than once or twice for clarifications.  He had studied her expression for some hint of insincerity, but had found none, at least none that he could detect in the candlelight.  And as she spoke he came to understand something about this beautiful young woman.  She was deeply devoted to the Virgin.  No hint of personal gain or notoriety had crossed her mind in bringing the Virgin here to her church.  It had seemed like the right thing to do, the only thing to do, and so she had done it.  She was one of the good ones.  He sensed a hard knot of darkness deep within her, an old festering wound that would not heal, but otherwise she was all love and generosity.  Had she always been like this, or was it the result of prolonged proximity to...her?

He turned to stare again at the Virgin.

“An incredible story,” he said into the silence.

If I were someone else, he thought, or even if I had happened to stumble upon this little room only last week, before my encounter with the Blessed Mother, I would have said they are both mad.  Good-hearted, sincere, and well intentioned, to be sure, but quite utterly mad.  But I am not someone else, and I believe every incredible word.

“Then you can see, can’t you,” Sister Carolyn said, and Vincenzo sensed that she was praying he could and would see, “that she has to remain here?  Remain a secret?”

“A secret?  Oh, no.  That is the last thing this discovery should be.  This is the Mother of God, sister.  She should have a cathedral of gold, she should be exalted as an ideal, a paradigm for a life of faith and purity.”

“But Monsignor, that isn’t what the Apostles intended when they brought her to the Resting Place in the desert.”

“Who are we to say what the Apostles intended?  And besides, these are different, difficult times.  True faith, generous and loving, seems to be on the wane, replaced by wild-eyed fundamentalist factions that call themselves holy and faithful and servants of God, yet are anything but.  Think what the physical presence of the Mother of God could mean to the Church, to Christianity, to all of humanity?  This could usher in a whole new age of faith.”

“Or mean the end of faith,” Dan said.

The statement startled Vincenzo.  “Whatever do you mean?”

He pointed to the body.  “Here she is—solid, visible touchable.  She cures the incurable.  You don’t need to believe that—it happens.  No faith is necessary when the proof is before you.”

He was right.  Was that what this was all about?  The end of the need for faith?  If so, it marked the beginning of…what?  Peace?

Dear Jesus, it all fit, didn’t it.  It all made sense now.  The discovery of the scroll, the journey of these two good people to the Holy Land, finding the remains of the Blessed Virgin, removing her from the desert, the Vatican sending him to Ireland and then New York, the apparitions, his cure, his arrival in the subcellar of this humble old church—these weren’t random events.  Three times his path and the Virgin’s had crossed: in Cork City, on the streets outside, and now in this tiny room.  There was a pattern here, a purpose, a plan.

And now Vincenzo saw the outcome of that plan.

The Virgin was to be revealed to the world.  And when she was brought to the Vatican, when she joined the Holy Father in Rome, it would herald a new age.  Perhaps it would signal the Second Coming.

Philosophers and academics had been speaking of the end of history for years already.  What will they say now?

The staggering immensity of the final sequence of events that might be set into motion numbed him for a moment.

The end of history...all history.

But he couldn’t tell these two what he knew.  At least not now.  He could, however, try to reassure them.

“There is a plan at work,” he said.  “And we are all playing our parts.  You’ve played your parts, and now I must play mine.  And the Vatican must play its own part.”

“But what if the Vatican doesn’t play its part?” she cried.  “What if, instead of showing her to the world, they hide her away in one of the Church’s deepest vaults where they’ll test her and probe her and argue endlessly whether to reveal her or keep her hidden from the world?  Don’t say it couldn’t happen.  This may not look like much, but here at least she has some contact with the world.  People are benefiting from her presence.  Leave her here.”

“I can’t make that decision.”

“Once she gets to Rome, she may disappear forever, as if we never found her.”

“That is absurd,” Vincenzo said.

But within he wondered if she might not be right.  He was more familiar than she with the internecine ways of the Holy See, and realized it was all too possible that the Virgin might be lost in the labyrinth of Vatican politics.

“Please!” she cried.

He was wounded by the tears in her eyes.  How could he separate her from the Virgin?  That seemed almost...sinful.

Vincenzo shook himself.  His duty was clear.

“I’m sorry, but I really have no choice.  I must report this to Rome at once.”

Sister Carolyn began to sob.  The sound tore at his heart.  He had to leave.  Now.  Before he changed his mind.

“I’ll be back as soon as I have the Vatican’s decision.”

“Don’t be surprised if you find an empty room,” Father Fitzpatrick said.

Vincenzo swung toward him.  “Please do not do anything so foolish as to move her or try to hide her.  I found her here.  I can find her anywhere.”

He hurried out of the room leaving behind the sobbing nun and the stricken, silent priest.

This is the way it has to be, he told himself.  This is the best way, the only way.

Then why did he feel like such a villain?

He would make it up to Sister Carolyn.  He would see to it that she was not separated from her beloved Blessed Mother.  He would convince the Holy see that Sister Carolyn Ferris must accompany the Virgin to Rome to tell her story.

But first he had to convince the Holy See that the body in the subcellar of this church was indeed the Blessed Virgin.  He could do that.  They’d believe him.  He’d debunked so many reputed visitations in the past that they’d listen when he told them he’d found the real thing.  More than a visitation—the greatest find since the dawn of the Christian Era.

And then it would begin.

The Second Coming...the end of history...

‡

Carrie clenched her teeth and tried to rein in her emotions.  What was wrong with her?  She’d never cried easily before.  Now she couldn’t seem to help herself.

She’d just about regained control when Dan stepped up beside her and gently encircled her in his arms.  His touch, and the depth of love and warmth in the simple gesture, toppled her defenses.  She sagged against him and broke down again.

“It’ll be all right, Carrie. We’ll work something out.”

But what could they work out?  Her worst nightmare had come true.

She straightened and faced him.  “They’re going to take her, Dan.  They’re going to take her and seal her away where no one will ever see her again, where no one but a privileged few will even know she exists.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do know that.”  Anger was beginning to elbow aside the fear and desperate sorrow.  “And I know we didn’t go to all that trouble to find her and bring her here just so she could be locked up in a Vatican vault!”

“But what the monsignor said about a ‘plan’ makes sense.  Don’t you feel it?  Don’t you sense a hand moving the pieces around a chessboard.  We’re a couple of the pawns, Carrie.  So’s the monsignor.”

“Maybe,” she said, although she knew exactly what Dan was talking about.  She’d felt it too.  “And maybe the ‘plan’ isn’t meant to play out the way the monsignor sees it.  We can’t let the Vatican have her.”

“How are we going to stop it?  You heard what he said about being able to find her if we try to hide her.  I don’t know how or why, but I believe him.”

Carrie believed him too.  Maybe it was the cure he claimed the Virgin had performed, maybe it was part of the “plan.”  Whatever it was, the monsignor seemed to have been sensitized to the Virgin.  He was like a smart bomb, targeted on Carrie’s dreams.

She had to find a way to stop him.

And suddenly she knew how.

“All right...” she said slowly.  “If we can’t hide her from the monsignor, we won’t hide her at all...from anyone.”

“I don’t—”

“You will.”

Excitement and dread blossomed within her as she considered the repercussions of what she was about to do.

She drew Dan to the Virgin’s side.

“Will you carry her upstairs for me?”

“Upstairs?  Into the kitchen?”

“No.  Further up.  Into the church.”

‡

Dan stood in the nave of St. Joe’s with the Virgin’s stiff remains in his arms, and tried to catch his breath.  The church was locked up tight for the night, silent but for the muffled voices of the latest contingent of Mary-hunters chanting their nightly Rosary outside on the front steps.  He wasn’t puffing from the exertion of carrying her up from the subcellar—the Virgin was as light as ever—but from anxiety.

What was Carrie up to?  She wouldn’t explain.  Was she afraid he’d balk if she told him?  No.  He’d do almost anything to keep her from crying again.  He’d never heard her cry before.  It was a sound he never wanted to hear again.

“Now what?  Where do I put her?”

She stood in the church’s center aisle, turning in a slow circle, as if looking for something.  Suddenly she stopped her turn.

“There,” she said, pointing to the space past the chancel rail.

“In the sanctuary?  There’s no place—”

“On the altar.”

Dan felt his knees wobble.  “No, Carrie.  That wouldn’t be right.”

She turned and faced him, her expression fierce.  “Can you think of anyone with more of a right to be up there?”

Dan couldn’t.

“All right.  But I don’t like this.”

He passed her and walked down the center aisle, genuflected, then stepped over the chancel rail and approached the altar, a huge block of Carerra marble.  It stood free in the center of the sanctuary so the celebrating priest could say Mass facing his congregation.

This was strange, really strange.  What was this going to solve or prove?  Carrie didn’t expect the Virgin to come alive or anything crazy like that, did she?

The thought rattled Dan as he stood before the altar.  His life had been so full of strange occurrences lately that nothing would surprise him.

As he set the Virgin gently upon the gleaming marble surface of the altar, he heard a metallic clank at the far end of the church.  He turned in time to see Carrie pushing open the front doors.

“She’s here!” he heard her cry to the Mary-hunters gathered outside.  “You don’t need to look any further.  The Blessed Mother is here!  Come in!  See her!  She’s waiting for you!”

“Oh. no!” Dan said softly as he saw the Mary-hunters edge through the doors,  “Oh, God, Carrie.  What are you doing?”

They crowded forward, candles in hand, hesitant at first, the curious at the rear pushing those ahead.  They were older, mostly female, with a few younger men and women salted among them.  Plainly dressed for the most part, but they had an eagerness in common.  He saw it in their eyes.  They were searching for something but not quite sure what.

And when they saw the body stretched out on the altar they hesitated, but only for a moment, only for a heartbeat.  Then they were moving forward again, surging ahead like some giant, single-celled organism, filling the center aisle and splashing against the chancel rail.

Dan listened to the talk within the Mary-hunter amoeba.

“Is it her?”...”Do you think that’s really her?”...”That’s not what I expected her to look like”...”Aren’t you forgetting the Assumption?  Can’t be her”...”Right.  She was assumed into heaven, body and soul”...”Besides, she looks too old, all dried up...”

And then the crowd was parting like the Red Sea to make way for a pinch-faced old woman in a wheelchair.  She wore a fur cap despite the heat and was propelled from behind by a burly orderly in whites.

“Let me through.”   The woman swung her cane before her to clear the way.  “I’ll tell you if it’s her or not, but I can’t see from back here.”

Her orderly wheeled her up to the brass gates of the chancel rail and she stared across at the altar.

Over and over Dan hear voices murmur, “What do you think, Martha?” and “Martha will know,” and “What does she say?”

Apparently this Martha was an authority of some sort among the Mary-hunters.

“I...” she began, then stopped.  “This shouldn’t be but... Get me closer, Gregory.”

Her dutiful orderly unlatched the chancel gates and pushed them open.  Dan didn’t want them in the sanctuary and was stepping forward to stop him when he felt a restraining hand on his arm.

Carrie was beside him.

“Wait.  Let her look.”

Gregory wheeled old Martha through the gates and parked her next to the altar where she was almost eye level with the Virgin.  She peered closely through her bifocals, then, tentatively, she reached out and brushed the Virgin’s cheek with her fingertip.

“Oh!” she cried and threw herself back in her chair as if she’d received a jolt of electricity.

Behind her Gregory stood with hands clasped behind his back, unprepared for the sudden convulsive movement.  Martha and her chair went over backward.

A moment of mass confusion in St. Joseph’s with people shouting and crying out in alarm, and then utter silence as Gregory righted the chair, turned to lift Martha back into it, and froze.

Martha was standing beside him.

Dan couldn’t tell who was more surprised—Gregory or Martha.

The old woman looked down at her newly functioning legs and screamed.  Pandemonium reigned then as the rest of the Mary-hunters added their own screams to hers, surging forward, surrounding the joyfully weeping Martha and the altar with its precious burden.

When a modicum of control was finally restored, the Mary-hunters knelt as one and began to recite the Rosary.

Their hunt was over.

Dan felt Carrie squeeze his arm.  He turned and saw her tight grin, the fierce gleam in her eyes.

“Let the Vatican try to keep her a secret now!”

MIRACLES IN MANHATTAN

“We’ve had many healings,” Martha Harrington announced to reporters from the front steps of St. Joseph’s church on the Lower East Side yesterday.

Mrs. Harrington should know.  Three days ago she was wheelchair bound, barely able to stand without the aid of two canes, and even then for only a minute or so.  Now she breezes up and down the steps of St. Joseph’s like a teenager.  She is reportedly the first miracle cure associated with the mummified body on display within the church.

The body, which the faithful proclaim to be the earthly remains of the Virgin Mary, appeared on the altar of St. Joseph’s three nights ago during a prayer vigil on the church steps.  Since then it has become an object of worldwide devotion and the center of a storm of ecclesiastical controversy.  So far, the Archdiocese of New York has had no comment on the healings other than to say that the phenomena are under investigation.

“Not everyone is healed,” Mrs. Harrington said.  “We can’t explain why some are healed and others are not.  It would be presumptuous of me to try.  ‘Many are called but few are chosen,’ as the saying goes.”

Obviously, Martha Harrington sees herself as one of the chosen.

(The New York

Times)

IN THE PACIFIC

11^o N, 140^o W

Now a supercell, the storm increases the whirling velocity of its central winds, growing wider, stretching into the upper atmosphere as it angles northeastward.  Its spinning core organizes into a funnel cloud that dips down...down...down until it brushes the churning surface of the ocean.  The funnel latches onto the sea like a celestial leech, whipping the water to foam as it draws up a thin stream into its 200-mile-an-hour vortex.

NINETEEN

Haifa, Israel

Customs Inspector Dov Sidel sat in his office, sipping tea and skimming this morning’s Ha’aretz.  A low-volume day at the port so he was taking his full break.  He glanced at an article about inexplicable cures in a New York City church attributed to what was supposedly the remains of the Virgin Mary.  After reading half of the first paragraph, he turned the page.

Two heartbeats later he flipped back.

A photo was connected to the article, a grainy black-and-white close-up of the face of the miraculous relic in Manhattan.  Something familiar about that face...

And then he recognized it: the sculpture he’d so admired when it had been shipped through Haifa this summer.  When had that been?  July?  He’d jotted down the name of the Tel Aviv gallery that had shipped it, and on his next trip to the city he’d stopped by the Kaplan gallery in the hope of seeing more works by the same artist.  The owner had told him the Old Woman piece was a one of a kind that he’d bought at auction.  He’d had no idea who the sculptor was.

And now Sidel knew why.  There was no sculptor.

No wonder the owner had seemed so brusque and unhelpful.  He’d smuggled out an archeological artifact as a contemporary work of art.

Inspector Sidel dropped the paper, picked up his phone, and dialed his superior at the central Customs Office.

JERUSALEM: THE LADY IS OURS!

JERUSALEM (AP) The Israeli government has announced that the mummified woman on display in St. Joseph’s church in Lower Manhattan, currently the object of hysterical devotion by throngs of Catholics and Christians of all denominations, belongs to them.  Spokesman Yishtak Levin claims his government has “indisputable evidence that the remains were smuggled out of Israel on July 22 of this year.”  Stating that “the remains are an historic national relic and the rightful property of the Israeli people,” he demanded its immediate return

.

(The New York

Post

)

TWENTY

Manhattan

Carrie turned away from the steaming stove and wiped the perspiration from her face.  Hot down here.  She saw Dan sitting in the corner staring at the floor.

“Why so glum, Father Dan?”

He looked up at her.  The usual sparkle was gone from his eyes, replaced by a haunted look.

I don’t know.”  He sighed as he leaned back in the chair.  “Don’t you get the feeling that everything’s spinning out of control?”

“No,” she said, and meant it.  “Just because we can’t see where events are leading doesn’t mean they’re out of control.  We may not be in the driver seat, but that doesn’t mean we’re on a runaway bus.”

“Is anybody in the driver seat?”

“Always.”

He jerked his thumb toward the ceiling.”I’ll tell you something.  No one’s in charge up there in St. Joe’s.  It’s chaos.”

“Confused, maybe, but it’s not anarchy.”

“Talk to Father Brenner about that, why don’t you.  He’s got a slightly different take on the situation.”

They’d both received a dressing down for opening the church to the Mary-hunters.  They’d expected that.  Father Brenner had lost control of his church—he couldn’t close it at night, couldn’t say Mass for his regular parishioners, couldn’t get on with the day-to-day business of the parish.  Every square inch of St. Joseph’s, from the rear of the sanctuary to the vestibule, down the front steps and into the street, was occupied by a restless, weary mass of humanity in every imaginable state of dress and health.

Father Brenner placed the blame on Dan and Carrie.

Carrie’s order had restricted her to the convent until proper disciplinary action could be taken.  Carrie refused to submit to what she saw as house arrest and, much to the dismay of Mother Superior, went about her usual duties at Loaves and Fishes.  She’d broken her vow of obedience so many times already she couldn’t see what difference it made if she kept on breaking it.  Besides, she’d made a vow to the Virgin to protect her and always stay near—that vow superseded all others.

“Father Brenner should be honored this is happening in his church.  So should you.  This is the most wonderful thing that’s ever happened to any of us.  Or ever will “

Dan shook his head slowly and smiled.  “I wish I could look at everything like you do.  I wish I could work a room like you do.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I wish I could get people to respond to me like you do.  You move through those people upstairs like an angel.  They’re hot, tired, sick, irritable, and hurting.  Yet you squeeze by, say a few words as you pass, and suddenly they love you.”

Carrie felt her cheeks reddening.  “Come on...”

“I’m serious.  I watch you, Carrie.  And believe me, you leave a sea of happiness in your wake.  Sounds corny, I know, but I see the smiles that follow you.  I see the love in their eyes, and they don’t even know you.  You have that effect on people.”

Carrie hesitated, trying to frame a reply, and then the phone rang.  Dan picked it up.

“Hello?...Hi, Brad.  Fine.  Yeah, she’s right here.  Hang on.”

He passed the phone over to Carrie, then waved as he took the tunnel back to the rectory.

“Hi, Brad,” Carrie said.  “What’s up?”

“It’s Dad.”

Carrie groaned.  “Now what?”

“He could be on his way out.”

She’d heard that before.

“What is it this time?”

“They were just getting ready to send him back to the nursing home when he had another heart attack.  A bad one.  They’ve moved him into the coronary care unit.”

Carrie said nothing, felt nothing.

“He’s asking for you,” Brad said.

“What else is new?”

“The doctors say he’s not going to make it this time.  He’s on a respirator, Car.  He looks like hell...”

That’s where he’s going.

“...and I just wish, before he dies, you could find some way to forgive—”

“How can I forgive what he did to me?” she said in a fierce whisper.  “How?”

“God forgave—”

“I’m not God!”

“At least give him a chance to say he’s sorry.”

“Nothing he can say—”

Brad’s voice rose.  “You’re better than he is, Carrie!  Act like it!”

And then he hung up.

Carrie stared at the receiver, stunned.  Brad had never yelled at her before.  Never lost his temper.

She replaced the receiver on the cradle and shoved her hands into her pockets.

Poor Brad.  Always the peacemaker—first between that man and Mom, now between that man and her.  But how could he think she could ever...

Carrie’s right hand pressed against the two little Zip-loc bags in her pocket.  The powdered nail clippings and the ground-up hair...

The stuff of miracles.

She decided to make a pilgrimage to the hospital.

‡

Carrie stood outside the door to CCU and trembled like one of her homeless guests in the throes of withdrawal.

How bad could this be?

She didn’t know.  And that was what terrified her.  Fourteen years since she’d last seen that man.  Half her life.  Sixteen years since he’d started sneaking into her bedroom at night...

And Brad...how much had her older brother known?

He’d never said.   They’d never discussed it, never laid it out on the table between them and stared at it.  He always referred to it as “the trouble” between her and that man.  Brad could have been discussing wrecking the family car or getting sick drunk.  “The trouble”...

Some trouble.

At first, as a pre-teen, Carrie had been afraid Brad would hate her if he found out, hate her as much as she hated herself.  And then she’d thought, he has to know.  How can he not know?

And if he knew, why didn’t he say something?  Why didn’t he help her?  Why didn’t he do something to stop that man?

Carrie was pretty sure Brad had spent the years since she ran away asking himself those same questions.  She wondered what answers he came up with.  She wondered if he’d ever really faced what that man he called Dad had done to his little sister.  Probably hadn’t.  Probably had it hidden in some dark corner of his mind, buried under a pile of other childhood and teenage memories where he couldn’t see it.

But he could smell it.  Carrie knew the stink of those two hideous years had affected the rest of Brad’s life.  Incessant work...a life so filled with deadlines and meetings and shuttling between coasts that that it left no room for old memories to surface...a life alone, without a wife or even a steady live-in, because a lasting relationship might lead to children and God knows what he might do if he ever fathered a little girl...

Carrie half turned away from the CCU door, ready to leave, then turned back as Brad’s final words echoed through her brain.

You’re better than he is, Carrie!  Act like it!

She set her jaw, numbed her feelings, and forced herself to push through into the CCU.

White...white walls, white curtains between the white-sheeted beds, white-clad nurses gliding from bed to bed, bright white sunlight streaming through the southern windows...flashing monitors, hissing respirators, murmuring voices...

Carrie turned to flee.  She couldn’t do this.

“Can I help you, Sister?” said a young nurse with a clipboard.

Carrie mechanically handed her the visitor pass.  “W—Walter Ferris?”

A smile.  “Bed Two.”  She pointed to the far end of the unit.  “He’s stable now, but please limit your visit to no more than ten minutes.”

Ten minutes?  Might as well say ten eternities.

The air become gelatinous and Carrie had to force her way through it toward Bed Two.  She couldn’t breathe, her knees wobbled, her hands shook, her intestines knotted, she had to go to the bathroom, but she kept pushing forward.  Finally she was standing at the foot of the bed.  She compelled her eyes to look down at it occupant.

The room spun about her as she stared at a pale, grizzled, wizened old man with thin white hair and sunken features.  His hospital gown seemed to lay flat against the mattress.  Wires and tubes ran under that gown, a clear tube ran into his right nostril, a ribbed plastic hose protruded from his mouth and was connected to a respirator that pumped and hissed as it filled and emptied his lungs.  His eyes were closed.

He looked dead.

She moved to the side of the bed, opposite of where a nurse was swabbing the inside of his mouth with some sort of giant Q-tip.

“What are you doing?” Carrie asked.

The nurse looked up, another young one, blonde.  They all seemed young in here.

“Just running a lemon swab over his oral membranes.  Keeps them moist.  Makes him more comfortable.  You must be his daughter.  Your brother’s mentioned you a lot but he said you couldn’t come.”

Carrie could only nod.

The nurse dropped the swab into a cup of water on the bedside table.  “I’ll leave you two alone.”

Carrie fought the urge to grab her and hold her here.

No!  Please don’t leave me alone with him!

But the nurse hurried off.  Carrie thanked God he was asleep.  She’d do what she came here to do and then leave.

“I forgive you,” she said softly.

Who knew what torment he’d been going through during Mom’s illness?  Perhaps something had snapped within him...temporary insanity.  There was a good chance he’d never done anything like that before or since.  One sick period in an entire life...true, that period had scarred both his children for the rest of their lives, but now, at the end of his days, it was time for forgiveness.  These were words Carrie had thought she’d never say, but her time with the Virgin had brought a change within her, a softening.

Humans are frail, and there is no sin that cannot be forgiven.

“I forgive you,” she repeated.

And his eyes opened.  Watery blue, struggling to focus, they narrowed, then widened.  He saw her, he knew her.  A trembling hand lifted, grasped her fingers where they clung to the side rail.

Touch...he was touching her again!

It took everything Carrie had not to snatch her hand away and run screaming from the CCU.  She hung on, quelling the urge to vomit as he squeezed her fingers in his arthritic grasp.

And then he loosened his grip and his fingers began to caress the back of her hand.  She felt her intestines writhe with revulsion but she kept her hand where it was.

He’s half out of his mind, she told herself.  Disoriented... doesn’t know what he’s doing.

But then she saw the smile twisting his lips, and the look in his eyes.  No repentance there, no guilt...more like fond memories.

Carrie pulled her hand away.  She wanted to run but she stood firm.  Maybe she was projecting.  Wasn’t that what they called it when you saw what you expected to see?  Maybe he was just glad to see her and she was misinterpreting his responses.  After all, she hadn’t laid eyes on him in fourteen years...

She couldn’t run now.  Not after she’d made it this far.  Besides, she’d come here on a mission.

To give him a chance.

She glanced around.  All the nurses were busy.  She pulled out the Zip-loc baggie filled with the filed nails from the Virgin and dipped a finger into the powder.  Originally she’d planned to mix it with a few drops of water and let him drink it, but with all these tubes running in and out of him, she didn’t see how that would be possible.  But that citrus swab looked perfect.

She pulled it from the plastic cup, transferred the powder from her finger to the swab, and then leaned over the bed.

He was still looking at her with that...that expression in his eyes.  She shuddered and concentrated on his mouth, slipping the swab through his open lips and running it across his dry tongue and up and down the insides of his cheeks.

His smile broadened.  His hand reached up to grab her wrist but she pulled back in time to avoid him.

“There,” she said softly.  “I’ve done my part.  The rest is between you and God.”

He continued to stare at her, grinning lasciviously.  She couldn’t stand it anymore.  She’d done her duty.  No use in torturing herself any longer.

“I’m going to go now.  I never—”

Suddenly his smile vanished and he began to writhe in the bed.  Carrie heard the beeps of his cardiac monitor increase their tempo.  She glanced up and saw the blips chasing each other across the screen.  She smelled something burning, and when she looked down, black, oily smoke was seeping out around the edges of his hospital gown.  The skin of his arms began to darken and smoke.

“Nurse!” Carrie cried, not knowing what else to do.  “Nurse, what’s happening?”

By the time the blonde nurse reached the bedside his writhing had progressed to agonized thrashing.  Smoke streamed from his now blackened skin and collected in a dark, roiling cloud above the bed as he tore the respirator tube from his throat and belched a stream of black smoke with a hoarse, breathy scream.

The nurse gasped.  “Oh, my God!”

At that instant he burst into flame.

The nurse screamed and Carrie reeled away, raising her arm to shield her face from the heat.

He was burning!  Dear sweet Jesus, the whole bed was engulfed in a mass of flame!

No...not the bed.  Carrie saw now that the bed wasn’t burning.  Neither was his hospital gown.  Nor the sheets.

Just him.

The CCU dissolved into chaos.  Screams, shouts, white-clad bodies darting here and there, shouting into phones, brandishing fire extinguishers, dousing the bed with foam, with white jets of carbon dioxide, but the flames burned on unabated, crisping his skin, boiling his eyes in their sockets, peeling the blackened flesh from his bones, and still he moved and writhed and kicked and thrashed, still alive within the consuming flames.

Still alive...still burning...

And then when it seemed that there was nothing left of him but his skeleton and a crisp blackened membrane stretched across his bones, he stiffened and arched his body until only his heels and the back of his head touched the mattress.  He remained like that for what seemed an eternity, exhaling his last smoky breath in a prolonged, quavering ululation, then he collapsed.

And with his collapse, the flames snuffed out.

All was quiet except for the long high-pitched squeal of his flat-lined cardiac monitor.  The nurses and orderlies crowded around the bed, covering their mouths and noses as they gaped at the blackened, immolated thing that had once been Walter Ferris, lying stiff and twisted in his unmarred, unscorched hospital gown.

Sick with the horror of it, Carrie staggered back, fighting to maintain her grip on consciousness.  She turned and stumbled toward the swinging doors, the voices of the CCU staff echoing above the howl of the monitor...

“Christ, what happened?”...”An oxygen fire?”...”Naw, look at the bed—not even scorched!”...”What happened to the smoke alarms?  How come they never went off?”...”Damnedest thing I ever seen!”...

Out in the hall Carrie stepped aside to let the hospital’s emergency crew pass.  She leaned against the wall and retched.

She’d come here to forgive him...she had forgiven him.

Apparently someone else had not.

Archdiocese to Close St. Joe’s

The Cardinal has announced that the Archdiocese of New York will temporarily close St. Joseph’s Church until the Diocese and Vatican officials have had time to evaluate the phenomena surrounding the relic displayed on the altar of the Lower Manhattan church.

“Let’s just call it a cooling-off period,” the Cardinal declared at a news conference yesterday.  “In the present climate of crowds, hysteria, and conflicting claims of right of ownership, clear, reasoned, dispassionate judgment is quite nearly impossible.”

St. Joseph’s parishioners will be instructed to attend services at St. Mark’s-in-the-Bowery until their own church is reopened.

The city has announced it will clear the area around St. Joseph’s in order to allow Church investigative teams to do their work without interference.

(The New York

Post

)

TWENTY-ONE

Manhattan

Decker honked and yelled and edged the D’Agostino’s truck through the crowd until it nosed up against one of the light blue “Police Line” horses that blocked access to the street ahead.  Beyond the barrier the pavement stretched dark and empty in front of St. Joseph’s, illuminated in patches by the streetlamps.  An island of calm in a sea of frustrated Mary-hunters.

“You know what to say?” Emilio said.

Decker nodded.  “Got it memorized.”

He jammed some gum into his mouth and slid out from behind the wheel as one of the cops approached.

Emilio watched from his spot in the middle of the front seat.  Molinari slouched to his right, trying to look casual with his elbow protruding from the open passenger window.  Emilio was keeping a decidedly low profile at this point in their little mission.  Decker and Mol sported extra facial hair, glasses, and nostril dilators to distort their appearances, but Emilio had gone to the greatest length to disguise himself.  He’d added a thick black beard to augment his mustache, a shaggy wig, and a Navy blue knitted watch cap pulled low over his forehead, almost to his eyebrows.  He was often caught in the background when the Senador was photographed leaving his office or his car, and he didn’t want the slightest risk of being identified later.

“Street’s closed, buddy,” the cop said.  “You gotta go down to—”

“Gotta delivery here,” Decker said, chewing noisily on the gum as he fished a slip of paper from his pocket.  “The rect’ry.”

“Yeah?  Nobody told me about that.”

“We deliver alla time, man.  Youse guys maya shut down da choich, but dem priests still gotta eat, know’m sayin’?”

As the cop stared at Decker, Emilio winced and closed his eyes.  He heard Mol groan softly.  Decker was laying it on too thick.

The cop pulled a flashlight from his belt.  “Let’s have a look at what you’re deliverin’.  You wouldn’t be the first Mary-hunters tried to sneak by us tonight.”

Emilio nodded as Mol nudged him.  They’d done this right.  This was no fake D’Agostino’s truck.  This was the real thing.  They’d hijacked it just as it left the store.  The driver was bound, gagged and unconscious in the trunk of a car Mol had stolen this afternoon.  The back of the panel truck was loaded with grocery bags, all scheduled for delivery elsewhere, but Emilio had changed the addresses on half a dozen of them to read “St. Joseph’s rectory.”

Emilio heard the rear doors open, heard the rustle of paper as a few of the bags were inspected, then heard the door slam closed.

Seconds later, Decker was slipping back behind the wheel as the cop slid the barrier aside and waved them through.

“‘Choich?’“ Mol said, leaning forward and staring at Decker.  “‘Choich?’“

Decker shrugged, grinning.  “What can I say?  I’m a Method actor.”

Mol laughed and grabbed his crotch.  “Method this!”

Emilio let them blow off a little steam.  They were in—past the guard house, so to speak—but they still had a long way to go.

Decker gave a friendly wave to the cop standing on the sidewalk in front of the church as he drove past, and backed the truck into the alley on the far side of the rectory.  Mol and Emilio got out, opened the rear of the trunk, grabbed some bags, and left the doors open as they approached the rectory’s side door with loaded arms.

A middle-aged woman opened the door.

“A gift for Father Dan from one of his parishioners,” Emilio said.  “Is he in?”

Emilio knew he was in—he’d confirmed that with a phone call.

“Why, yes,” the woman said.  She let them into the foyer, then turned and called up the stairs behind her.  “Father Dan!  Someone here to see you!”

By the time she turned back again, Mol had put his grocery bags down and had a pistol pointing at her face.

“Not a word, or we’ll shoot Father Dan.  Understand?”

Eyes wide, jaw trembling, utterly terrified, she nodded.

“Anyone else in the house besides Father Dan?” Mol said.

She shook her head.

“Good.”  Mol smiled.  “Now, let’s find a nice little closet so we can lock you up where you won’t get hurt.

Emilio had his own automatic—a silenced Llama compact 9mm—ready and waiting for Father Dan when he came down the stairs.

“Hello,” the priest said.  “What—”

And then he saw the pistol.

“Let’s go to church, shall we, Father?” Emilio said.

The young priest looked bewildered.  “But there are police all over—”

“The tunnel, Father Dan.  We’ll use the tunnel.”

The priest shook his head.  “Tunnel?  I don’t know what you’re—”

Emilio jabbed the silencer tip against his ribs.  “I’ll shoot your housekeeper in the face.”

“All right!” Father Dan said, blanching.  “All right.  It’s this way.”

“That’s better.

Mol rejoined them then, and gave Emilio a thumbs-up sign.  The housekeeper was safely locked away.  She’d keep quiet to protect her precious priest from being shot while the priest was leading them to the church in order to keep his housekeeper from being shot.

Wasn’t brotherly love wonderful?

But repeated reminders never hurt.  Emilio had worked this one out and memorized it: “No heroics, please, Father.  We’re not here to hurt anyone, but we’re quite willing to do so without hesitation if the need arises.  Remember that.”

‡

Why are all these things happening, Mother?

Carrie sat in the front pew, staring at the Virgin where she lay upon the altar.

She could not get the sight of her father—now that he was dead, had died so horribly, it seemed all right to call him that—out of her head.  The flames, the oily smoke, the smell, the obscene sizzle of burning human flesh haunted her dreams and her waking hours, stealing her appetite, chasing her sleep.  That had been no ordinary fire.  Only the man had burned, nothing else.

Did I do that, Mother?  Did you?  Or was that the work of Someone Else’s hand?

And now the church was closed, the sick and lame turned away, the building sealed, the street blocked off.  What next?  Tomorrow these aisles would be crowded with investigators from the Archdiocese and the Vatican, trailed by nosy, disrespectful bureaucrats from City Hall and Albany, from Washington and Israel, all poking, prodding, examining.

They’ll be interrogating me about how you got here.  I won’t tell them a thing.  It’s not me I’m worried about, Mother.  It’s you.  They’ll treat you like a thing—an it.  They may even decide you belong back in Israel.  What’ll I do then, Mother?

Carrie felt tears begin to well in her eyes.  She willed them away.

There’s a plan, isn’t there, Mother?  There has to be.  I just have to have faith and—

She heard a noise in the vestibule and turned.  She smiled when she saw Dan leading two other strange-looking men up the aisle, but he did not return her smile.  He looked pale and grim.

And then she saw the pistols.

She shot to her feet.  “Dan?  What’s going on?”

“I don’t know.”  His voice was as tight as his features.  “They came into the rectory and—”

“What we want is very simple,” the bigger, bearded one said.  He stopped a dozen feet or so down the aisle from Carrie and let Dan continue toward her.  He gestured toward the altar with his pistol.  “We want that.”

Carrie was stunned for a few seconds, unable, unwilling to believe what she’d just heard.

“Want her for what?” she managed to say.

“No time for chatter, Sister.  Here’s how we’ll do this.  You two will carry her back through the tunnel to the rectory, and we’ll take her from there.  No tricks, no games, no heroics, and no one gets hurt.”  He gestured with his pistol at Dan.  “You take the head and she’ll take the feet.  Let’s move.”

“No!” Carrie said.

The bearded man snapped his head back in surprise.  Obviously he hadn’t expected that.

Neither had Carrie.  The word had erupted from her with little or no forethought, propelled by fear, by anger, by outrage that anyone could even think of stealing the Virgin from the sanctuary of a church.

She faced him defiantly.

“Get out of here.”

He stared at her for a heartbeat or two, then pointed his gun at Dan.

“You cause me any trouble and I’ll shoot your priest friend.”

“No, you won’t.  There’s a cop outside that door.  All I have to do is scream once and he’ll be in here, and that will be the end of you.  Get out now.  I’ll give you a chance to run, then I’m going to open the front doors and call the police inside.”

“I’m not kidding, lady,” the big one said through his teeth.  “Get up there and do what you’re told.”

“Carrie, please,” she heard Dan say from her left.  “It’s okay.  They can’t get past the cops with her anyway.  So just do as he says.”

Dan might be right, but Carrie wasn’t going to let these creeps get their filthy hands on the Virgin for even a few seconds.

“Get out now or I scream.”

The shorter one looked about nervously, as if he wanted to take her up on the offer, but the bearded one stood firm.  His eyes narrowed as he raised his pistol and aimed it at her chest.  His voice was low and menacing.

“No me jodas.”

He wouldn’t dare, she thought.  He’s got to be bluffing.

“All right,” she said.  “I gave you your chance.”

Still they didn’t move, so she filled her lungs and—

She saw the flash at the tip of the silencer, saw the pistol buck, heard a sound like phut!, felt an impact against her chest, tried to start her scream but she was punched backward and didn’t seem to have any air to scream with.  And then she was falling.  Darkness rimmed her vision as a distant roaring surged closer, filling her ears, bringing with it more darkness, an all-encompassing darkness...

‡

Nara, Japan

As the first rays of the sun crest the horizon and light the flared eaves of the Todaiji temple, the largest wood structure in the world, it begins to dissolve, to melt into the air.  And as the sun rises farther, the temple further dissolves.  Finally the sun strikes the bronze surface of the Daibutsu.  The bronze of the Buddha seems to glow for a moment, then it too dissolves.

In a manner of minutes, nothing of the Todaiji or its Buddha remains.

‡

Manhattan

Emilio stood frozen with his automatic still pointed at where she had been standing as he watched her fall and lay twitching on the marble floor, the red of her life soaking through the front of her habit and pooling around her.

“Christ, Emilio!” Mol gasped beside him.

“Carrie!” the priest cried, dropping to his knees beside her and gripping her limp shoulders.  “Oh, God, Carrie!”

I’m sorry, Emilio thought.  I’m so sorry!

And that shocked him.  Because he’d killed before without the slightest shred of guilt.  Anyone who threatened him or stood between him and what he wanted didn’t deserve to live.  It had always been that simple.  But here, now, in this place, before that old woman’s body on the altar, a new emotion, as unpleasant as it was unfamiliar, was seeping through him.

Guilt.

The priest looked up at him, tear-filled eyes wild, rage and grief distorting his features almost beyond recognition.  With a low, animal-like growl he hurtled himself at Emilio.

A bullet in the head would have been the simplest, most efficient response.  But Emilio couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger.  Not again, not here, with...her here.  Instead he dodged aside and slammed the Llama’s butt and trigger guard hard against the priest’s skull, staggering him.  Before the man could shake off the blow, Emilio hit him again, harder this time, knocking him to the floor where he lay still with a trickle of red oozing from his scalp.

Mol had already started back down the center aisle.

“Where are you going?”

He turned and looked at Emilio, fear in his eyes.  “I—”

“Shut up and stand still.  Listen!”

Emilio strained his ears through the silence.  And as he’d hoped, it remained just that: silent.  None of the noise in here had penetrated the heavy oak front doors; the cop outside had no idea anything was going on inside.

“All right,” Emilio said, gesturing toward the altar.  “Let’s get moving.”

Mol hesitated, glanced once more at the front doors, then shrugged and hurried toward the altar.  Emilio directed him toward the head of the body while he took the other end.

But as he reached to take hold of the feet, he hesitated.  He hadn’t believed in this church-priest-God-religion bullshit since he’d been a little boy in Camino Verde and watched his older sister screw the neighborhood men in the back corner of their one-room shack.  Any guilt he’d felt a moment ago had been a leftover from the times his grandmother would drag him off to church before he was big enough to tell her to go to hell.  And yet...a deep part of him was afraid to touch this mummified old woman, afraid a lightning bolt would crash through the ceiling of the church and fry him on the spot.

“Bullshit!” he whispered and gripped the body’s ankles.

Nothing happened.

Angry with himself for feeling relieved, he nodded to Mol who had her by the shoulders, and together they lifted her off the altar.

Surprisingly light.  They each got a comfortable grip on her, then hurried down the center aisle, Emilio leading, carrying her feet first.  Through the vestibule, down the steps into the locked-up soup kitchen in the cellar, through the tunnel, and back up into the rectory.  All still quiet there.  Decker would have been inside if anyone had come in.  They eased the body out the side door, slipped her into the back atop the grocery bags, and locked the doors.

Emilio climbed into the cab next to Decker and slapped the dashboard.  “Let’s go.”

“Any trouble?” Decker said as he nosed the truck into the street.

“Not really,” Emilio said.

Mol snorted.  “Like hell!”

“What happened?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Emilio said.  “Just drive.”

He wanted Decker cool and calm for the drive back past the police and through the crowd, but he needn’t have worried.  The police waved them by, and even made a path for them through the horde of Mary-hunters beyond.

Once they were free of the crowd and rolling toward the FDR Drive, Emilio allowed himself to breathe a little more easily.  And he’d breathe even more easily when they ditched this rig and switched the body to the Avis panel truck he’d rented earlier.  But he knew he wouldn’t be able to relax fully until they had it aboard the Senador’s waiting jet and were airborne over LaGuardia.

‡

Angkor, Cambodia

As the rays of the rising sun touch the five towers of the Temple to Vishnu, the stone begins to dissolve.  By the time the sun is fully above the horizon, the temple is no more.

‡

Manhattan

She is gone!

Kesev violently elbowed his way through the crowd near St. Joseph’s, leaving a trail of sore and angry Mary-hunters in his wake.  Let them shout at him, wave their fists at him, he didn’t care.  He had to reach the church, had to know if his suspicion was true.

During the past hour he had felt a dwindling of the Mother’s presence, and then suddenly it was gone.

He’d sensed something else, felt a change coming over the world.  A wheel had been set in motion.  What would its turning bring?

Finally he reached the front of the crowd, but as he squeezed under the barricade, two blue-uniformed policemen, one white, one black, confronted him.

“Back on the other side, buddy,” the white one said.

“You don’t understand,” Kesev told him.  “She’s gone.  They’ve stolen her.”

He heard the crowd behind him begin to mutter and murmur with concern.

“Now don’t go starting trouble, Mister,” the black one said.  “The lady’s fine.  We’ve been out here all night and nobody’s been in or out of that church.”

“She is gone, I tell you!”  Kesev turned to the crowd and shouted, “They have stolen the Mother right out from under your noses!”

“Shut up!” the white policeman hissed in his ear.

But Kesev wrenched free and began running toward the front of the church.

“Come!” he shouted to the crowd.  “Come see if I am not telling you the truth!”

That was all they needed.  With a roar they knocked over the police line horses and surged onto the street, engulfing any cop who tried to stop them.

The lone policeman stationed in front of the church backed up to the front doors but decided to get out of the way as Kesev charged up the steps with the mob close behind him.  A few good heaves from dozens of shoulders and the doors gave way and they flowed through the vestibule and into the nave.

And stopped with cries of shock that rapidly dwindled, finally fading into horrified silence.

The altar was bare.  And near the end of the center aisle two figures huddled on the floor.  Kesev recognized them immediately—the nun and the priest from the El Al plane back in July.

The priest was kneeling in a pool of red, weeping, his deep, wracking sobs reverberating through the church as blood from a scalp wound trickled down his forehead to mingle with his tears.  In his arms lay the limp, blood-soaked form of the nun.

Kesev, too, wept.  But for another reason.

‡

Mumbai, India

The rosy fingers of dawn grasp the decorative tower of the Mahalakshmi Temple and squeeze it and the rest of the structure from existence.

‡

Manhattan

“Do you remember me?”

Dan forced his eyes open.  He was cold, he was sick, he was emotionally drained and numb; his head was pounding like a cathedral gong, and his scalp throbbed and pulled where it had been stitched up.  But the greatest pain was deep inside where no doctor could see or touch, in the black void left by Carrie’s death and the brutal, awful, finality of her dying.

The four hours he’d spent here seemed like minutes, seemed like ages.  He’d sat in a daze, occasionally staring at the TV screen suspended from the ceiling.  Something was happening in the Far East.  Temples, mosques, churches were disappearing, vanishing as if they’d never been, leaving not a trace even of their foundations.  Only empty holes remained where they’d stood. But all other buildings around them remained intact.  It was happening with the rising of the sun.  Dawn was sweeping across the world like a scythe, leaving not a single place of worship standing. Words and phrases like Antichrist and End Times filled the airwaves.

So what.

Dan looked up from his seat in the Emergency Room of Beekman Downtown Hospital.  For a rage-blinded instant he thought the black-bearded man with the accented voice standing over him was the bastard who’d shot Carrie.  He tensed to launch himself at him, then realized this was someone else.  Just as intense, but much too short.  He’d seen this man before but his grief-fogged brain couldn’t recall where or when.

“No,” he said.

“At Tel Aviv airport last summer...I was questioning your nun friend and you—”

Now Dan recognized him.  “The man from the Shin...”  He fumbled for the word.

“Shin Bet.  The name is Kesev.  But I’m here unofficially now.”

“I wish we’d never gone to Israel,” he said, feeling a sob growing in his chest.

Carrie...dead.  Dan still couldn’t believe it.  This had to be a dream, the worst nightmare imaginable.  A dream.  That was the only logical explanation for all these fantastic, unexplainable events, the most unbelievable of which was Carrie’s death.  Life without Carrie...a Carrie-less world...unthinkable.

But it had seemed so real when he’d held her limp, cold, blood-drenched body in his arms back there in St. Joe’s.

So real!

“I wish you’d arrested us and jailed us.  At least then Carrie would still be alive.”

“So do I,” Kesev said.  “For more than her sake alone.  There are other matters to consider.”

“Yeah?  Like what?”

Dan heard the belligerence creeping into his tone, into his mood.  What right did this Israeli bastard have to come up to him here in the depths of his grief and start bothering him about Carrie?  What did anything matter now that Carrie was dead?

“We must find the Mother.”

“You find her!  She’s brought me nothing but grief.”

He started rise but Kesev restrained him with a surprisingly strong hand on his shoulder.

“If we find the Mother, we find the killers.”

Dan leaned back into the chair.  Find the killers...wouldn’t that be nice?  To wrap his fingers around that big bearded bastard’s throat and squeeze and squeeze, and keep on squeezing until—

“Father Fitzpatrick?”

Dan looked up.  One of the homicide detectives who’d questioned him before was approaching—Sergeant Gardner.  He carried a black plastic bag in his hand.  What did he want now?  He’d told him everything, given descriptions of the killers, the sound of their voices, anything he could think of.  He was tapped out.

He noticed Kesev slipping away as the detective neared.

“They’re shipping her remains uptown,” Gardner said.

Dan lurched to his feet.  “Why?  Where?”

“S-O-P.  To the morgue.  They’re going to autopsy her right away.”

“So soon?”  Hadn’t Carrie been through enough?  “I’d’ve thought—”

“The pressure’s on, Father.  We’ve got a big, mean, unruly crowd outside your church, and from what I hear, the commish has already heard from the cardinal, the mayor, Albany, even the Israeli embassy.  Everybody but everybody wants these guys caught and that relic returned.  The commish wants a full forensic report on his desk by six a.m., so they’re going to do her right away.”

“Can I see her before—?”

Gardner shook his head.  “Sorry.  She’s gone.  Saw her off myself.”  He held out the black plastic bag.  “But here’s her personal effects.  You want to return them to the convent?  If not...”

“No, that’s all right.  I’ll take them.”

Detective Gardner handed the bag over and stood before him, awkward, silent.  Finally he said, “We’ll get them, Father.”

Dan could only nod.

As the detective hurried away, Dan sat and opened the bag.  Not much there: a wallet, a rosary, and Carrie’s Zip-loc bags of the Virgin’s clippings and nail filings.

For an insane moment Dan thought of cabbing up to the morgue—it was up in the Bellevue complex, wasn’t it?...First Avenue and 30th...he could be there in a couple of minutes.  He’d sneak into the autopsy room.  He’d sprinkle the entire contents of both bags over Carrie’s body and...

And what?  Bring her back to life?

Who am I kidding? he thought.  That’s Stephen King stuff.  Carrie’s gone...forever.

Without warning, he broke into deep, wracking sobs.  He hadn’t even felt them coming.  Suddenly they were there, convulsing his chest as they ripped free.

A hand touched his shoulder.  He fought for control and looked up.  The man called Kesev had returned.

“Come, Father Fitzpatrick.  I’ll take you home.  There are things we must discuss.”

Dan nodded absently.  Home...where was that?  The rectory?  That wasn’t home.  Where was home now that Carrie was dead?  He didn’t care where he went now, he just knew he didn’t want to stay in this hospital.

He bunched up the neck of the plastic bag and followed Kesev toward the exit.

‡

Manhattan

Dr. Darryl Chin, Second Assistant Medical Examiner for New York City yawned as he pulled on a pair of examination gloves.  This is what you get, he supposed, when you’re downline in the pecking order and you live in the East Village: They need somebody quick, they call you.

“Could be a lot worse,” he muttered.

He looked down at the naked female cadaver supine before him on the stainless steel autopsy table, dead-pale skin, breasts caked with blood, dark hair tangled in disarray, jaw slack, dull blue eyes staring lifelessly at the overhead fluorescents.  The murdered nun he’d heard about on the news tonight.  Young, pretty, and fresh.  The fresh part was important.  Only a few hours cold.  He might get some useful information out of her.  Better than some stinking, macerated, crab-nibbled corpse they’d dragged out of the Hudson.  And this was a neat chest wound, not some messy gut shot.  He’d be through with this one in no time.

If he ever got started.

Where the hell was Lou Ann?  She was supposed to assist him tonight.  She lived in Queens and had a longer ride, but she should have been here by now.  Probably had to put on her face before she came in.  Darryl had never seen her without two tons of eye liner and mascara.

Vanity, woman be thy name.

No use in wasting time.  He could get started without her.  Open and drain the thorax at least.  These chest wounds always left the cavity filled with blood.

He probed the entry wound with his little finger.  Looked like the work of a 9mm slug.  Good shot.  Right into the heart.  Poor girl probably never knew what hit her.

He reached up and adjusted the voice-activated mike that hung over the table.  He gave the date and read off the name of the subject and presumed cause of death from the ID card, then reached for his scalpel.

Time to open her up.  Get the major incisions out of the way, drain and measure the volume of blood in the thoracic cavity, and by then Lou Ann would be here and they could start in on the individual organs.

He poked his index finger into the suprasternal notch atop the breast bone, laid the point of the blade against the skin just below the notch, and leaned over the table to make the first long incision down the center of the sternum.

“Please don’t do that.”

A woman’s voice.  He looked around.  Who—?

Then he looked down.  The cadaver’s blue eyes were no longer dull and unfocused.  They were bright and moving, looking at him.  They blinked.

The scalpel clattered on the metal table as he jumped back.

“Jesus Christ!”

“Please don’t take His name in vain,” the nun said, staring at him as she levered up to a sitting position on the table.

Darryl felt his heart hammering in his chest, heard a roaring in his ears as he backed away.

She’s dead!  She’s dead but she’s talking, moving!

She swung her legs over the side of the table and slipped to the floor.  Still backing away, Darryl dumbly watched her naked form cross the room like a sleepwalker and pull a white lab coat from a hook on the wall.

Darryl’s heel caught against something on the floor and he fell backward, his arms pinwheeling for balance.  He grabbed the edge of a table but his fingers slipped off the shiny surface and he landed on his buttocks.  His head snapped back and struck the painted concrete block of the wall.

Darryl tried to call out but found he had no voice.  He tried to hold onto consciousness but found it a losing battle.

The last thing he saw before darkness closed in was the dead woman slipping into the lab coat and walking out the door, leaving it open behind her.

‡

Mecca, Saudi Arabia

The sun rises over the Arabian sea and strikes the minarets and domes of Masjid al Haram.  The mosque and every open spot around it as well as its central courtyard, home to the Kaaba, are packed with the faithful who have rushed here from all directions.  More are on the way, careening from all over the world to protect the holiest place in all of Islam.  They have brought their prayer rugs and are on their knees, their foreheads pressed to the ground as they face the Kaaba and pray to Allah to save the Masjid al Haram.

But the minarets and domes and walls dissolve, and the Kaaba too fades away, leaving only the participants in the last Hadj.

IN THE PACIFIC

24^o N, 120^o W

Reconnaissance flight 705 out of San Diego is buffeted by tornadic winds and blinding torrents as it fights its way toward the center of the huge, mysterious Pacific storm that shows up on satellite photos but not radar.  An unclassifiable, logic-defying storm with the combined properties of an Atlantic hurricane, a Pacific typhoon, and a Midwestern supercell.  All that can be said of it from orbit photos and fly-by observation is that a towering colossus of violent weather topping out at fifty-thousand feet is crossing the Pacific in the general direction of northern Mexico.

Reconnaissance 705’s mission is to classify it, but right now, hemmed in by roiling clouds and radar that shows clear, calm, open sea ahead of them, they are truly flying blind.  The pilot, Captain Harry Densmore, has never experienced anything like this.  The barometric readings are in the mid-twenties as he approaches what should be the center of the storm.  He wants to turn back but needs to know what’s at the heart of this monstrosity.  There’s no eye visible from orbit, but all indications point to an organized center.  One look, one reading, and he’ll turn tail and run.  This monster hasn’t killed anybody yet but he’s afraid he and his crew might change all that.  He’ll count himself lucky if he sees San Diego again. 

Just a little farther...

Suddenly the plane is buffeted by a gust that knocks it 45 degrees off line.  Metal shrieks in Densmore’s ears and he’s sure she’s going to come apart when suddenly they’re in still air.

“It’s got an eye!” he shouts.  “We’re through the eye wall!”

But an eye should be clear.  And in an eye this size, blue sky should be visible above.  Not here.  It’s dark in this eye.  Very dark.  And raining.

Maybe it’ll clear up ahead.

The copilot calls out the barometric reading: Twenty-three.

“Twenty-

three

?  Check that again.  That’s got to be wrong!”

Then lightning flashes and Densmore sees something through the rain ahead.  Something huge.  Something dark.  The far side of the eye wall?  Maybe this eye isn’t as big as he thought.  Maybe—

“Oh, Christ!”

He turns the wheel and kicks the rudder hard, all but standing the plane on its wing-tip as he banks sharply to the left.  The shouts of alarm and surprise from his copilot and navigator choke off as they see it too.

He finishes the turn and levels off on a circular course around the center of the eye, catching lightning-strobed glimpses of the cyclopean thing in the heart of the storm.  His copilot’s and navigator’s hushed, awed voices fill the cabin.

“What in God’s name

is

that?”

“I don’t know.”

They are at 20,000 feet and whatever it is reaches from the ocean below and disappears into the clouds miles above them.

Densmore realizes that what he sees before him is impossible.  He knows his physics, and something that big breaks all natural laws.  Just like the storm itself.

Which means something else is driving this storm that breaks all the rules and defies the world’s most sophisticated radar tracking system.

And God help whoever is in its way when it makes landfall.

Suddenly he wants to be as far away as possible from this unnatural phenomenon.

“Take some pictures so people won’t think we’re all crazy, and let’s get the hell out of here.”

Moments later, reconnaissance flight 705 re-enters the eye wall but instead of flying through, it is tossed back by the hellish fury of the tornadic winds.  Densmore tries again and again to pierce the wall but each time his craft is rejected like an unwanted toy.

The storm won’t let them leave.  They’re trapped...in the eye...with that thing...

Densmore resumes a circular path along the wall, staying as far as possible from its center.  They’re safe here in the relative calm of the eye—safe at least from the winds—as long as their fuel holds out.

But they’ve got only a few hours’ worth left.

TWENTY-TWO

HURRICANE WATCH

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HAS ISSUED A HURRICANE WATCH FOR SANTA BARBARA, VENTURA, LOS ANGELES, ORANGE AND SAN DIEGO COUNTIES.  BRING IN LOOSE OUTDOOR OBJECTS, FILL UP YOUR CAR WITH GAS AND STAY TUNED FOR FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS.

(The Weather Channel)

‡

Manhattan

They sat in the front room of the rectory.  Neither Father Brenner nor Mr. Kesev of the Shin Bet wanted a drink, but Dan didn’t let that stop him.  Monsignor Riccio had come by to offer his condolences.  He seemed to know Kesev—apparently they’d met on the street a while back.

The Monsignor didn’t say, “This is what you get for recklessly going public with the Virgin,” but Dan guessed he was thinking it.  He was gracious, however, and wished sincerely for the speedy capture of the killers, then he left.  Father Brenner had sat up with him awhile, then he went back to his room to watch TV.

TV…all the world was watching TV.  The streets, even the ones outside the church—relocked until the blood could be cleaned from the floor—were empty.  Everyone was inside watching the wave of destruction as it wiped out of places worship across the globe.  If there was panic, it wasn’t in the street, it was quiet and private.  Dan figured more prayers were being said across the globe right now than at any other time in history.  And no doubt fewer atheists and agnostics now than at any other time in history a well.

Yet he felt strangely aloof from it all.

“What do you think it means?” he asked Kesev.  “The destruction of all these churches and temples, I mean.”

“He is coming.”

“Who?  The Antichrist?”

Kesev looked at him.  “There is no such person.  It is a fiction concocted by crazy men.  The Master is coming.”

“You mean Jesus?”

Kesev nodded.

“But why now?”

Kesev shrugged.  “Because He has decided it is time.”

No straight answers from this one.  If Kesev was right, it was the End of Days.  Dan found he didn’t care.  He did care that his glass was empty.  He rose to pour himself a third Dewar’s.

“Sure you won’t have one?”

“No, and I do wish you would not drink too much.”

Dan stopped in mid-pour.  Kesev was right.  This wouldn’t do him any good.  Wouldn’t ease the pain, even a little.  The wound was too wide, too deep, too fresh.

“This is my last.  But what’s it to you?  What do you care about me or how much I drink?”

“I’m sorry for you and for that poor dead woman.  But I’m concerned for my own sake as well.  You see...for many years I have been the Mother’s guardian.”

“ ‘The Mother,’ “ Dan said softly.  “The Virgin.  How Carrie loved her.”  Then the rest of Kesev’s words sank in.  “Guardian?  We had a fake scroll supposedly written by the Virgin’s guardian back in the first century.”

The memory of Carrie’s girlish excitement over that scroll punched a new ache through his chest.

Carrie, Carrie...why couldn’t you have just let them take her?

“Yours was a forgery, a copy of another, but the words were true, as you discovered.”

“Any idea who wrote it?”

“I did.”

Dan stared at him.  “You must know your first century, Mr. Kesev.  That was a pretty convincing scroll.  Where’d you learn all that?”

Kesev shrugged.  “From life.”

“You mean from the guardians before you, passing it down.  Who are these guardians anyway?  Members of some sect?”

“No.  Only one guardian.”

This conversation was getting strange.

“You mean just one at a time...one guardian from each successive generation, right?”

Kesev shook his head.  “No.  Just one guardian.  Ever.  From the beginning.  Me.”

“But that would make you a couple of thousand...”

Kesev nodded slowly, but he wasn’t smiling.

“No...no, that would be—”

“Impossible?”

Dan was about to say yes when it occurred to him: Was anything impossible anymore?

And then he heard the rectory’s side door open.  He stood and started across the room.  Now who was it?

‡

Paraiso

“So this is what all the excitement is about.”

Arthur Crenshaw stared down at the mummified body where it rested before him on the glass coffee table.

Paraiso was empty except for him and Charlie and Emilio.  Decker and Molinari had returned to their respective homes directly from the airport.  Arthur had sent all the help—domestic as well as nursing—home for the night.  The fewer who knew about his “borrowing” of the relic, the better.  Beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows of the great room lay the unrelieved gloom of the night and the ocean.  No starlight broke through the restless mantle of cloud that stretched above the Pacific like a shroud.  The only sounds were Charlie’s labored breathing and the swoosh of the wind against the glass.

He walked around the table, examining the body from all sides.  Not very impressive.  Hardly lifelike at all.  You could tell it was someone old and female, but that was about all.  Could this be the actual remains of the Virgin Mary?  Didn’t seem possible.  All right, possible, yes, but highly improbable.  You’d think there’d be some sort of glow or aura about it if it was really Mary.  So maybe it was just the nicely preserved remains of an early saint.

Whatever it was, could it save Charlie?

Arthur sighed.  Apparently it had healed others—many others—back in New York.  No reason why it shouldn’t do the same here.

But whatever it did, it had better do it quickly.  Charlie was fading away before his eyes.  The latest try at a new experimental therapy had failed.  Charlie’s CD-4 count was lower than ever.  He didn’t have much time.  This relic was his last chance at a cure.

But how to go about it?

Charlie was running one of his fevers again, semi-comatose most of the time, and when he was responsive he was delirious—no idea of who he was or where he was or even that he was sick.  He couldn’t pray to this object, couldn’t ask it or anyone else for help.

So that left it up to Arthur to do the praying.

Maybe Charlie and the object should be closer.  And since it was such a major task to move Charlie’s set-up with its IVs and oxygen tank, Arthur figured the easiest way to get the two together was to move the body.

If Mohammed can’t come to the mountain...

He turned to Emilio.  “Let’s move her over by Charlie, table and all.”

Emilio held back a moment.  He’d seemed to be keeping his distance from the body.  Strange...Arthur had always thought of Emilio as the least superstitious man he’d ever met.  When he finally approached, they each took an end of the coffee table and, carrying it like a stretcher, moved the table and its burden around the couch and set it down next to Charlie’s hospital bed.

Arthur then said a prayer, asking the Lord to forgive Charlie for his past and to allow the healing powers in this relic—be it the remains of His earthly mother or some other holy person—to drive the infection from his son’s wasted body so that he might continue his life and have an opportunity to make up for the evil ways of his past.

As he finished the prayer with a heartfelt recital of the “Our Father,” Arthur slipped Charlie’s painfully thin, limp, clammy arm through the guard rail and guided it toward the body on the table.  He pressed the back of Charlie’s hand against its dry cheek and held it there.

Arthur wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but he was hoping for more than what he got, which was nothing.

He swallowed his disappointment.  He had to keep in mind that there’d been no pyrotechnics associated with the Manhattan healings, so the lack of them here didn’t mean that nothing had happened.

He held Charlie’s hand against the skin for a good fifteen minutes, all the while praying for mercy for his son, then he replaced the arm under the bedsheet.

He noticed Emilio standing off to the side, staring out at the darkness.  He seemed preoccupied.

“Well,” Arthur said, “all we can do now is watch and wait.”

Emilio nodded but said nothing.

Arthur shrugged and turned on the TV.  He felt as if he were in a vise. The destruction of the churches in the Far East, moving west, the storm in the Pacific, moving east.  The Weather Channel said it was still headed for the southern part of the state.  Paraiso would get only the fringe winds.

Good.  In the morning he’d have some blood drawn on Charlie for a stat CD-4 count.  If this relic had done its work, the count would be up and Charlie’s fever would break.

Please, God.  Not for me...for Charlie.

He switched to CNN for the latest on the churches and wound up in the middle of a story about the theft of a religious object from a Manhattan church.  Film showed close-ups of enraged faces and crowds tipping over police cars and smashing store windows.

Arthur’s stomach lurched and he glanced back at the body on the table next to Charlie’s bed.  That was the only object they could be talking about.  But why such coverage—on CNN of all places?  He hadn’t expected this kind of commotion.  He’d have to have Emilio drop it off someplace where it could be “discovered” tomorrow.

And then the screen showed the newswoman at a desk with the face of a young nun superimposed over her shoulder.  Arthur leaned forward, straining his ears because what she was saying could not be true.  The young nun had been murdered during the theft of the object.

Murdered!

Arthur swiveled in his seat and tried to rise to his feet but his legs wouldn’t support him.

“Emilio?” he gasped.  “You didn’t...you couldn’t have...”  But the look in Emilio’s eyes told him more than any words could say.  “Dear God, Emilio!  Dear God!”

‡

Manhattan

As Dan watched, a pale, dark-haired young woman in a long white coat stepped inside the rectory side door.

Dan dropped his drink.  His knees buckled and he clutched the back of a chair to keep from falling.  He opened his mouth to speak but his voice wasn’t there.

Carrie!

“I have to go to California, Dan,” she said evenly as she entered the front room.

He stumbled forward and threw his arms around her.

“Carrie!” he croaked.  “You’re alive!  Thank God, you’re—”

She stood stiff and unresponsive in his embrace; her skin was cold against his cheek.  Her chill transmitted to him.  Spicules of ice formed in his blood as she spoke again.

“No, Dan.  I’m not.”

Dan released her and backed away.  She was staring at him with her bright blue eyes, but they were her only lively feature; the rest of her face was slack, and her voice...hollow.  Not movie-zombie dead and robotic.  It had timbre and tone, but something was missing.  Emotion.  She was like some of the guests at Loaves and Fishes who came in stoned on downers.

An inane question popped out of his reeling mind: “How did you get here?”

“I walked.”

He noticed Kesev had risen and was standing beside him.

“Carrie...”  Dan’s mind whirled, refusing to accept what he was seeing.  “I...you...the doctors said you were dead.”

She reached forward and took his hand—her touch was so cold.  She freed his index finger from the others and pulled the front of her lab coat open.  She pressed the tip of Dan’s finger into the small round hole along the inner border of her left breast.

“He killed me, Dan.”

Dan cried out in anguish and revulsion as he tore his hand free.  The room dipped and veered to the left, then the right.  The Scotch, the concussion, seeing Carrie murdered, getting her back but not getting her back because she wasn’t really back...it was all too much.  Unable to stand any longer, he sank to his knees before her.

“Oh, God, Carrie!  What is this?  What does it mean?”

“I have to go to California, Dan.  Please help me get there.”

“Calif—?”

Kesev stepped forward.  “Why California?  Is that where the Mother is?”

Carrie turned and stared at Kesev as if seeing him for the first time.  She took a step backward and something twitched in her expression.  Dan tried to decipher it: Surprise?  Wonder?  Fear?

“You...I know who you are now.”

“The Mother?” Kesev said quickly.  “She’s in California now?”

“Yes.  I have to be with her.”

“Can you take us to her?”

“I need help.  We have to hurry.  We have to fly.”

“Yes, yes!” Kesev said excitedly.  “We will leave immediately!”

Dan struggled back to his feet.  “Now just a damn minute!  We’re not going anywhere until I know—”

“The Mother is there!” Kesev’s eyes were bright as he leaned into Dan’s face.  “The sister will lead us to her.”

“No!  This is crazy!  I’ll call the police.  Detective Garner—”

As Dan turned to reach for the phone, Kesev grabbed his arm.  His fingers cut into him like steel cables.

“She came to us, Father Fitzpatrick.  Was sent to us.  Not to the police.  Us!  That means that we are meant to go with her.  It is not our place to involve the police.  Do you understand what I am saying?”

Dan nodded.  He was beginning to understand—at least as much as someone could understand something like this.  He realized Kesev had his own agenda here.  He wanted the Virgin back.  If what he’d said was true, he’d been guarding the Virgin for two thousand years and wasn’t about to quit now.  In the presence of Carrie’s reanimated corpse, Dan found that relatively easy to accept.

But who was Kesev?

Carrie was the other mystery.  Had she been brought back from death for a purpose, or had her desire to be with the Virgin overcome death itself?

Dan could find little comfort in either alternative.

But it didn’t matter.  Carrie was here, asking for his help.  Dan would do everything in his power to give her that help.

“All right,” he said.  “Let’s call the airlines.”

‡

Jerusalem

A deafening cry goes up as dawnlight strikes first the Dome of the Rock.  Jew and Muslim, Israeli and Palestinian rally here for a common purpose: To prevent the destruction of this place so holy to both religions.  Prayer rugs among the davening Orthodox, imams among rabbis . . .

And yet the light is unfazed, the process inexorable.  After slowly dissolving the Dome, it moves on to the Western Wall, truly a wailing wall now as thousands of voices scream as they watch it melt into the air.

‡

Athens, Greece

The pillars of the Parthenon stand unattended as they disappear at first light . . .

‡

The Vatican, Italy

. . . but not so Saint Peter’s Basilica.  The Catholic faithful jam every inch of the square as the Pope leads them in prayer from his window.  But to no avail . . . the Basilica dissolves along with every other church in Rome . . .

‡

Paris, France

. . . and then Notre Dame Cathedral and La Sainte-Chapelle which share Île de la Cité . . . gone.

And the blade of dawn moves on . . .

IN THE PACIFIC

30^o N, 122^o W

As its fringe winds begin to brush the coast of southern California, the storm veers sharply north.

Captain Harry Densmore stares bleary eyed through the windshield and adjusts 705’s circular course along the eye wall.  They should have been out of fuel long ago, but the needle on the gauge hasn’t budged since they entered the eye.  So they keep on flying.  They’ve got to keep on flying.

But what are the engines running on?

TWENTY-THREE

HURRICANE WARNING

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HAS ISSUED A HURRICANE WARNING FOR SANTA CRUZ, MONTEREY AND SAN LUIS OBISPO COUNTIES.  HURRICANE LANDFALL IS EXPECTED BY 9:00 A.M.  EVACUATION OF OCEANFRONT AND LOW-LYING AREAS SHOULD BEGIN IMMEDIATELY.

(The Weather Channel)

‡

Paraiso

Emilio fought through the horizontal sheets of rain assaulting the ambulance as he wound up the road through the woods to Paraiso.  Bolts of lightning lanced the sky, clearing the way for the ground-shaking thunder, but the heavy vehicle hugged the road.

When the storm had changed course in the early hours and it became clear that it would strike Monterey County, the Senador had sent him to find an ambulance for Charlie, to take him inland out of harm’s way.

But there were none to be had.  The city had placed every available ambulance, public and private, on standby alert.  Emilio had stopped by a few services personally, contacted many more by phone.  No matter how much he offered, they would not risk their licenses by hiring out for a private run during the emergency.

Call the county Civil Defense, they said.  All you’ve got to do is tell them it’s an emergency, that you need an ambulance immediately to remove an invalid from an evacuation area, and they’ll okay it.  No problem.

No problem?  Not quite.  Emilio could hardly get Monterey County officialdom involved in moving an AIDS patient who happened to be Senator Arthur Crenshaw’s son.  The word would spread like the wind from this storm.  He couldn’t even allow a private ambulance company to know who it was transporting.  He wanted to rent a fully-equipped rig and drive it himself.  The answer everywhere was the same: Nothing doing.

Emilio had wanted to scream.  He could not let the Senador down on this.  He’d already suffered the withering fury of his anger after he’d learned about the nun.  The Senador had been quiet at first, then he’d exploded, calling Emilio a murderous fool, a ham-handed incompetent, a dolt who had jeopardized a lifetime of effort.  The Senator had turned away in disgust, telling him to see if he could do something as simple a hiring an ambulance without screwing that up.

Hurt, humiliated, Emilio had vowed never to fail the Senador again, but events continued to conspire against him.  He had to get an ambulance.  To return to Paraiso without one was unthinkable.

So Emilio stole one.

Quite easy, actually.  The whole world was in panicked turmoil over the systematic destruction of temples and mosques across the globe.  California had not been spared.  Dawn had left not one church or synagogue standing.  This area of the state was in double disorder because of the added threat of the storm.

Emilio had taken advantage of that.  He’d parked his own car at an indoor garage, then walked two blocks to the lot of one of the ambulance services.  Amid the tumult of the storm, they never heard him jump start the engine and drive away.

A particularly violent blast of wind buffeted the ambulance as it crossed the one-car bridge over the ravine.  The top-heavy vehicle lurched and for an instant—just an instant—Emilio lost control as it seemed to roll along on only two wheels.  It slewed and skidded and veered toward the guardrail, but before he could panic it rocked back onto all four wheels again.

And then a deafening pop and a sizzle as a blinding bolt of lightning wide as a man arced into the base of a huge ponderosa pine on the far side of the ravine.  There was no pause between the flash and the thunder.  The ambulance, the bridge, the entire ravine shook with the deafening crash.

Emilio slowed as he blinked away the purple after-image of the flash.  Through the blur he saw flames licking at the blackened trunk of the pine.  The whole tree was swaying wildly in the wind...seemed to be moving his way.

He blinked again and cried out in terror as he saw the huge pine toppling toward him.  He floored the accelerator, swerving the ambulance ahead on the bridge.  The right rear fender screeched against the metal side rail.  Emilio bared his clenched teeth and let loose a long, low howl as he kept the pedal welded to the floor.  Had to move, had to get this huge, filthy puerco going and keep it going, couldn’t go back, couldn’t even look back, straight ahead was the only way, even if it looked like he was driving into the face of certain death, his only hope was to get off this bridge and onto the solid ground straight ahead on the far side of the ravine.  Because this bridge was a goner.

Branches slashed, crashed, smashed against the roof and windshield, spiderwebbing the glass in half a dozen places.  It held though, and Emilio kept accelerating.  He heard the flashers and sirens tear off the roof as he slipped the ambulance under the falling trunk with only inches to spare.  But he wasn’t home yet.  He heard and felt the huge pine’s impact directly behind him.   The ambulance lurched sideways as the planked surface of the span canted right and tilted upward ahead of him.  He fought to keep control, keep moving, keep accelerating, because he knew without looking that the bridge was going down behind him.  The wet tires spun and slipped on the rapidly increasing incline and Emilio filled the cabin with an open-throated scream of mortal fear and defiant rage.

Emilio Sanchez refused to die here, smashed on the rocks a hundred feet below.  His destiny was not to meet his end as a storm victim, a mere statistic.

The tires caught again, the ambulance lunged forward, its big V-8 Cadillac engine roaring, pushing the vehicle up the tilting incline and onto the glistening asphalt and solid ground.

He slammed on the brakes and sagged against the steering wheel, panting.  When he’d caught his breath, he held his hands before his face and watched them shake like a palsied old man’s.  Then he stepped out into the wind and rain and looked back.

The bridge was down.  The giant pine had broken its back, crashing through the center of its span and dragging the rest of it to the floor of the ravine.

Emilio began to laugh.  He’d stolen an ambulance and now he couldn’t use it.  No one could use it.  And no one would be leaving Paraiso, not Emilio, not the Senador, and certainly not Charlie.

Prisoners in Paradise.

His laughter died away as he remembered the fourth occupant of Paraiso.  That ancient body.  He’d have to do something about that.  It was evidence against him.  He had to find a way to dispose of it.  Permanently.

‡

“Turn here.”

Dan sat behind the wheel of their rented Taurus and stared at the electric security gate that stood open before them.  Through the wind-whipped downpour he made out identical red-and-white signs on the each of the stone gateposts:

PRIVATE PROPERTY

NO TRESPASSING

VIOLATORS WILL BE

PROSECUTED

“Are you sure?” Dan said.  “This is a private road.”

“Turn here,” the voice from the rear repeated.

Dan glanced at Kesev in the front passenger seat.

The bearded man nodded agreement that they should proceed through the gate.

“Yes.  The feeling is strong.  The Mother is near.”

Dan then turned to look at Carrie where she sat in the back seat, staring up the private road.

She wore one of Dan’s faded plaid flannel shirts over his oldest pair of jeans, and a pair of dirty white sneakers they’d found in the housekeeper’s closet.  She looked like a refugee from a grunge band.

Once again Brad’s AmEx card had come in handy for the tickets and the rental car agency.  They’d driven south from San Francisco, following Carrie’s directions as she took them deeper and deeper into increasingly severe weather.  Now they were on the coast of Monterey County.

Dan faced front and did as he was told.

He was on autopilot now.  His head throbbed continually, but it had been aching so long now he barely noticed.  The post-concussion dizziness and nausea were what plagued him physically.  Emotionally and intellectually...he was numb.

With no sleep for thirty-six hours, with the woman he loved murdered but sitting in the back seat giving him directions toward the corporal remains of the Virgin Mary, what else was there to do but shut down his emotions, turn off his rational faculties, and become some sort of servomechanism?

Go through the motions, follow instructions to get to where you’re going, do, do, do, but don’t think, don’t question, and for God’s sake, don’t feel.

Because mixed with the guilty joy of having Carrie back was the horrific realization that she wasn’t really back...not really back at all.  And Dan knew if he unlocked his emotions he’d go mad, leap from the car, and run screaming through the trees.

So he kept everything under lock and key, turned the car onto the narrow asphalt path, and kept his eyes on the road.

Water sluiced down the incline toward the Taurus but the front-wheel drive kept them moving steadily.  Pine needles, pine cones, leaves, and fallen branches littered the roadway.  Dan drove over them, letting them snap and thud against the underbelly of the car.  He didn’t care.  Didn’t care if they punctured the oil pan or the gas tank.  All he wanted was to get where he was going.  Somewhere ahead was the Virgin, and with her maybe the man who shot Carrie.

And then what will I do?

Whatever he did or didn’t do, Dan sensed that he was on his way toward a rendezvous with destiny...or something very much like it.  Whatever it was that lay ahead, he wanted to confront it and have done with it.  Things had to change.  Something had to give.

Because he couldn’t go on like this much longer.

The trees thinned as they came to the top of a rise.  It looked open ahead.  And then Dan saw why: A deep ravine lay before them.

“Keep going?”

“Straight ahead,” Carrie said.

Kesev pointed.  “I see a bridge.”

Dan gunned the engine.  The car accelerated.

‡

“And so, Senador,” Emilio said, spreading his hands expressively, “I’m afraid we are stuck here.”

Arthur Crenshaw nodded slowly, amazed at his own serenity.  Here he was, trapped in a house that was little more than a giant bay window set in a cliff overhanging the ocean, looking down the barrel at the most powerful Pacific storm on record.  He’d watched the front steamroll in, the lightning-slashed clouds sweep past, blotting out the rest of the world as the storm launched its assault on the coast—his coast.  And every time he’d thought he’d seen the peak of the storm, it grew worse.  The ocean below churned and frothed like an enormous Jacuzzi; thirty-foot waves lashed at the rocks, hurling foam a hundred feet in the air; wind and rain battered the huge windows, warping and rattling the glass.  And yet he was not afraid.

Something—who else could it be but Satan—had destroyed every place of worship in the world.  Saint Patrick’s in New York, every synagogue in Brooklyn, the National Cathedral in DC, all the small-town Baptist churches in the rural South, the Mormon Cathedrals in Bethesda and throughout Utah.  And yet he was not afraid.

That amazed him.

Perhaps he was too drained to be afraid.  Or perhaps all his fear was centered on Charlie.

His son was worse.

Arthur didn’t need a CD-4 count to know that.  Instead of falling, Charlie’s fever had risen through the night.  He was now in a coma.

His son was dying.

Arthur moved to Charlie’s side, passing the so-called miraculous relic as he did.  He was tempted to boot the piece of junk off the table, even drew his foot back to do so, but for some reason changed his mind at the last moment.  Why bother?  Just another in a long line of fakes.  And to think a young woman had been killed in order to bring it here.

And then it occurred to Arthur that perhaps that was why Charlie had not been healed.  An innocent life had been snuffed out in order to save Charlie’s, and so Charlie could not be saved.  Because a life had been taken on one end of the country, another life would be allowed to burn out on the other.  A balancing of the scales.

Rage flared.  Damn Emilio!

But he’d only been following orders.  Arthur remembered his own words: Bring me that body—no matter what the cost.

But he’d meant money and effort and expense—not life.

Hadn’t he?

Not that it mattered now.  The inescapable reality of Charlie’s impending death blotted out all other considerations.

“He’s going to die, Emilio,” he said, staring at Charlie’s slack features.  “Charlie...my son...flesh of my flesh and Olivia’s...the last surviving part of Olivia...is going to be gone.  Why didn’t I appreciate him while he was here, Emilio?  When did I stop thinking of him of a son and start seeing him as a liability?  That never would have happened if Olivia were still here.  She was my heart, Emilio.  My soul.  When I lost her, something went out of me...something good.  Charlie was harmless but I came to loathe him.  My own son!  And that loathing infected Charlie, causing him to loathe himself.  That’s when he stopped being harmless, Emilio.  That’s when he started becoming harmful to himself.  His self-loathing made him sick so he’d end up here in this pathetic miniature intensive care unit in the big gaudy showplace of a home where he was never really welcome when he was well.”

Arthur bit back a sob.

“I’ve got so much to answer for!”

Unbidden, unwelcome, another thought slithered out of the darkest corner of his mind, whispering how if Paraiso were damaged by the storm...if, say, some of the windows were smashed and Charlie’s terminally ill body were washed out into the Pacific, he’d be listed as a storm victim instead of an AIDS victim, wouldn’t he?

Arthur shook off the thought—though, despairingly, not without effort—and shoved it back down the dank hole it had crawled out of.

Is this what I’ve come to?

He backed away from the windows as the wind doubled its fury, battering those floor-to-ceiling panes until he was certain one of them was going to give.

‡

Emilio watched the Senador retreat from the storm, but he stood firm.  He felt no fear of wind and rain.  What were they but air and water?  And even if he were afraid, he would not show it.  He feared nothing...except perhaps that body he’d brought back from New York.  He had to get rid of it.

An idea formed...put the body in the back of the ambulance...send them both over the edge of the cliffs into the wild, pounding surf far below...

And as the plan took shape...

The storm stopped.

The thunder faded, the wind died, the rain ebbed to a drizzle.  Suddenly only swirling fog danced beyond the windows.

“Senador?” Emilio said.  He rested his hands against the now still glass and stared out at the featureless gray.  “It is over?”

“Not yet,” the Senador said, his voice hushed.  “I’ve read about this type of thing.  I believe this is what they call the eye of the storm, the calm at its center.  It won’t last long.  But why don’t you hurry up topside and take a look around, see how much damage we’ve got up there.  Don’t get too far from the door.  As soon as the wind starts to blow again, get back inside, because the back end is going to be just as bad as the front, maybe worse.”

Emilio nodded.  “Of course.”

He hurried up the stairs and stepped outside into a dead calm.

The still, warm air hung heavy with moisture.  Fog drifted lazily around him, insinuating through his clothes, clinging to his skin.  So strange to have no wind.  Emilio could not remember a time when a breeze wasn’t blowing across the cliff tops.

And silent...so eerily silent.   Like cotton wadding, the fog muffled everything, even the sound of the surf below.  No birds, no insects, no rustling grass...silence.

No, wait.  Emilio’s ears picked up a hum, somewhere down the driveway, growing louder.  It sounded almost like...

A car.

Emilio gasped and took a hesitant step toward the noise.  He glanced at the carport.  The Senador’s limousine and the ambulance were where he’d left them.  And still the sound grew louder.

No!  This is not possible!

Instinctively he reached for his pistol before he remembered that he’d left it downstairs in the great room when he went into town.  He hadn’t retrieved it because what need for a pistol with the bridge out and Paraiso isolated from the outside world?

The bridge was out!  He’d seen it fall.  He’d almost gone down with it.  How could—?

Emilio stood frozen as a Ford sedan rounded the final curve in the rain-soaked, debris-littered approach road and pulled to a stop not a hundred feet in front of him.  Normally Emilio would have rushed forward to confront any trespassers, but this was different.  Something was wrong about this car.

A short, bearded man stepped out of the passenger side and glanced around before staring at Emilio.

“The Mother,” he said in an unfamiliar accent.  “She is here.  She has to be here.  Where is the Mother?”

The Mother? Emilio wondered.  What is he—?  He was jolted by a sudden thought: Can he be talking about the ancient body below in the house?

But Emilio had questions of his own.

“How did you get here?”

“In the car,” the man said with ill-concealed impatience.  “We drove up the road.”

“But the bridge—!”

“Yes, we came over the bridge.”

“The bridge is out!  Down!”

The bearded man looked at him as if he were crazy.  “The bridge is intact.  We just drove over it.”

No!  This couldn’t be!  This—

The driver door opened then and out stepped a familiar figure.  Emilio steeled himself not to react, to hide the sudden mad thumping of his heart against the inner walls of his chest.

The priest!  Father Daniel Fitzpatrick!

The priest looked Emilio square in the face but gave no sign of recognition.  Without the hat, the mirrored glasses, and the phony beard he’d worn that night in the church, Emilio was a different person.

But if he hadn’t come looking for Emilio, if he hadn’t brought the police to arrest him for the murder of the nun, why was he here?

“Where are we?” the priest asked.

Emilio was about to answer, to tell them both to get back into their car and get off the Senador’s private property, when the rear door opened and out stepped a dead woman.  He knew she was dead because he’d killed her himself.

“You,” she said softly, staring at him levelly.  “I know you.  You murdered me.  Why?  You didn’t have to kill me.  Why did you do that?”

Something snapped within Emilio.  He could stand no more.  He turned and fled back inside, slamming the door behind him.  As he turned the deadbolt, he leaned against the door, panting and sweating.

This was loco!  A car carrying a walking, talking dead woman drives across a bridge that is no longer there.  He was going loco.

He turned and shut off the power to the elevator.

Good.  If they were real, they now were locked outside and would be at the mercy of the second half of the storm.  If they were not real, what did it matter?

Emilio pulled himself together, took a deep breath, and descended to the great room.

“All is well topside, Senador.”

But the Senador did not seem to hear.  He stood by Charlie’s bed, staring out through the windows, a mix of awe and terror distorting his features.

Emilio followed his gaze and cringed against the stairway when he saw what was taking shape out over the Pacific and racing toward them.

“Madre!”

‡

Everything had happened so fast.

You murdered me.

Dan had been momentarily stunned by Carrie’s words.  His mind whirled, adding a beard, hat, and glasses to the mustachioed face staring at Carrie in horrified disbelief, comparing this voice to the one he’d heard in the church, and then he was sure: Here was the motherless scum who had put a bullet in her heart.

Before he’d been able to react, the man had turned and dashed back to the hemi-dome behind him and vanished through a doorway.  And then a Navy reconnaissance plane had swooshed overhead.  He’d just started wondering what sort of idiot would be flying in this hellish storm when another sound captured his attention.

A dull roaring filled Dan’s ears.  At first he assumed it was enraged blood shooting through his battered brain, then he glanced beyond the hemi-dome and saw something impossibly tall, incalculably huge looming out of the foggy distance and hurtling toward them.

“Oh, my God!”

Nearly half a mile wide and God knew how tall, it stretched—swirling, twisting, writhing—from the dim, misty heights to the sea where it terminated in an eruption of foam on the wave-wracked surface of the Pacific.  Water...an angry towering column of spinning water...all water...yet bright lights flashed within it.

To call this thing a waterspout was to call Mount Rushmore a piece of sculpture.  And it was coming here, zeroed in on this spot.

Dan spun around, looking for a place to hide, but saw none.  The car—no...too vulnerable.  The door in the hemi-dome—it had to lead below, to safety.

Pulling Carrie with him, he ran to it and tugged on the handle.  The handle wouldn’t turn, the door wouldn’t budge.  Kesev stood back, strangely detached as he watched death’s irresistible approach.

“Locked!” Dan shouted, and began pounding and kicking at the unyielding surface.  “Let us in, damn you!  Open up!”

And all around him the roaring of the approaching waterspout grew to a deafening crescendo.

This is it, he thought.  We’re going to die right here.  In a few minutes it’ll all be over.  But God, I’m not ready to go yet!

And then Carrie laid a hand on his shoulder, reached past him and turned the knob.

The door swung open.

Dan swallowed his shock—no time to wonder how the door had become unlocked—and propelled Carrie through ahead of him.  Kesev followed at a more leisurely pace, closing the door behind him.

Stairs ahead, leading downward toward light.  Dan went to squeeze past Carrie but she’d already begun her descent.  He followed her down the curved stairway into a huge, luxuriously furnished room.  His hope of surviving this storm rose as he saw that it was carved out of the living rock of the cliff itself, and then that hope was dashed when he saw the huge glass front overhanging the ocean.  The monstrous waterspout was out there, still headed directly for them, and no glass on earth would stop that thing.

He noticed two—no, three—other people in the room: a new face, unconscious in a hospital bed, the man who had shot Carrie, and...Senator Arthur Crenshaw.  The killer and the senator stood transfixed before the onrushing doom.

And supine beside the bed...the Virgin.

Carrie must have spotted her, too, for she began moving toward the body—

—just as the windows exploded.

With a deafening crash every pane shattered into countless tiny daggers.  Dan leaped upon Carrie to shield her—she was already dead, he remembered as he pushed her to the floor and covered her, yet his protective instincts prevailed.  Instead of slashing everyone and everything in the room to ribbons, the glass shards blew outward, sucked into the swirl of the storm outside.

A thundering roar filled the room as warm seawater splashed against his back, soaking him.  Dan squeezed his eyes shut, encircled Carrie with his arms, and held her cold body tight against him...one last embrace...

Any second now...

But nothing happened.  The water continued to splatter him but the roar of the waterspout remained level.  Dan lifted his head and risked a peek.

It had backed off to a quarter mile or so, but remained out there in the mist, dominating the panoramic view, lit by flashes within and around it, swirling, twisting, a thousand yards wide, snaking from the sea to the sky, but moving no closer.

Dan rose and studied it.  For no reason he could explain, it occurred to Dan that it seemed to be...waiting.

Ahead of him, the senator and the murderer were struggling to their feet and staring at it through the empty window frames.

“What is that?” Senator Crenshaw cried.

“Not ‘what,’“ Carrie said as she rose to her feet behind Dan.  “Who.”

The senator turned and stared at her a moment.  He seemed about to ask her who she was, then decided that wasn’t important now.

“ ‘Who?’ “  He glanced back at the looming tower.  “All right, then...who is it?”

“It’s Him,” Carrie said, beaming.  She pointed to the Virgin.  “He’s come for His mother.”

The senator glanced at the Virgin, gasped, and gripped the edge of the hospital bed for support.  Dan looked to see what was wrong.

The Virgin was changing.

The seawater from the spout that had soaked into her robes, into her skin and hair was having a rejuvenating effect.  The blue of the fabric deepened, her hair darkened and thickened, and her face...the cheeks were filling out, the wrinkles fading as color surged into her skin.

The murderer cringed back and murmured something in Spanish as the senator leaned more heavily against the bed.  Carrie moved closer and dropped to her knees.  Dan glanced to his right and saw that Kesev, even the imperturbable Kesev, was gaping in awe.

And then the Virgin moved.

In a single smooth motion she sat up, then stood and faced them.

Dan saw Kesev drop to his knees not far from Carrie, but Dan remained standing, too overwhelmed to move.

She was small framed, almost petite.  Olive skin, deep, dark hair, Semitic features, not attractive by Dan’s tastes, but he sensed an inner beauty, and an undeniable strength radiating from her sharp brown eyes.

Those eyes were moving, finally fixing on Carrie, kneeling before her.  Smiling like a mother gazing upon a beloved child, she reached out and touched Carrie’s head.  “Dear one,” the Virgin said softly, her voice gentle, soothing.  “Rise, both of you. I am not to be worshipped.  We are almost through here.”

Kesev rose but Carrie remained on her knees.

The Virgin’s smile faded as she turned to Senator Crenshaw.

“Arthur,” she said.  “The prayermaker.”

Crenshaw held her gaze, but with obvious difficulty

“Emilio,” she said, frowning at the murderer.  “The killer.”

He turned away.

Then it was Dan’s turn.

A tiny smile curved her lips as she trapped his eyes with her own.

“Daniel.  The hunger-feeder.”

Dan felt lifted, exalted.  He sensed her approval and basked in it.

Finally she turned away and Dan felt the breath rush out of him.  He hadn’t realized he’d been holding it.  She could have called him vow-breaker, fornicator, doubter...so many things.  But hunger-feeder...he’d take that any day.

Her expression was neutral as she faced Kesev.

“So, Iscariot...you broke another trust.”

Iscariot!  Dan’s mind reeled.  No...it couldn’t be!

“Mother, events conspired against me.  I beg your forgiveness.”

“It is not my place to forgive.”

“Perhaps it is I who should forgive!” Iscariot cried.  “Once again I have been used!  Used!”

“You are not alone in that,” the Virgin said pointedly.

Iscariot’s head snapped back, as if he been struck, but he recovered quickly.

“Perhaps not.  But it is I who have been reviled throughout the Christian Era.  And yet without me, there would be no Christian Era—no crucifixion, no resurrection.”

“You wish to be celebrated for betraying Him?”

“No.  Simply understood.  I believed in Him more than the others—I was led to believe He was divine.  I thought He would destroy the Romans—all of them—as soon as they dared to lay a hand on Him.  But he didn’t!  He allowed them to torture and kill him!  I was the one who was betrayed!  And I’ve spent nearly two thousand years paying for it, most of them alone, all of them miserable.  Haven’t I suffered enough?”

Her expression softened into sympathy.  “I decide nothing, Judas.  You know that.”

Judas Iscariot!  Of course!  It all fit.

They’d been reading the real Gospel of Judas.  The scroll’s author had mentioned being educated as a Pharisee, and of being an anti-Roman assassin, using a knife—they were called iscarii.  Judas Iscariot had been all those things.  And Kesev was Hebrew for...silver!

“But you hung yourself!” Dan blurted.

The man he’d known as Kesev looked at him and nodded slowly.  “Yes.  Many times.  But I am not allowed to die.”

“W-why are you here?” Crenshaw said.

The Virgin turned to him and pointed to Emilio.

“Because you told him to bring me here.”

“Yes-yes,” Crenshaw said quickly, “and I’m terribly sorry about that.  Grievously sorry.”  He pointed at the waterspout still roaring outside the empty window frames.  “But why is He here?”

Again the Virgin pointed to Emilio.

“Because you told him to bring me here.”

“No!” Emilio screamed.

He had a pistol—no silencer this time—and was holding it in a two-handed grip.  The wavering barrel was pointed at the Virgin.  A wild look filled his eyes; he crouched like a cornered animal as he let loose a rapid-fire stream of Spanish that Dan had difficulty following.  Something about all this being a treta, a trick, and he’d show them all.

Then he began pulling the trigger and firing at the Virgin.

The reports sounded sharp and rather pitiful against the towering roar from outside.  Dan didn’t know where the bullets went.  Emilio was firing madly, the empty brass casings flying through the air and bouncing along the floor, but the Virgin didn’t even flinch.  No holes appeared in her robes, and Dan saw no breakage in the area behind her.  The bullets just seemed to disappear after they left the muzzle.

Finally the hammer clinked on an empty chamber.  Emilio lowered the pistol stood staring at his untouched target.  With a feral whine he cocked his arm to throw it at her.

That was when the light went out.

Not the electricity—the light.  An instant blackness, darker than a tomb, darker than the back end of a cave in the deepest crevasse of the Marianas Trench.  Such an absolute absence of light that for an instant Dan panicked, unsure of up or down.

And then a scream—Emilio’s voice, filled with unbearable agony as it rose to a soul-tearing crescendo, and then faded slowly, as if he were falling away through space.

The blackness, too, faded, allowing meager cloud-filtered daylight to reenter the room.  And when Dan could once again make out details, he saw that Emilio was gone.  His pistol lay on the rug, but no trace of the man who owned it.

Dan staggered back and slumped against a support column.  He leaned there, feeling weak.  So fast...one moment a man in frenzied motion, the next he was gone, swallowed screaming by impenetrable blackness.

But gone where?

“Oh, please!” the senator cried, dropping to his knees and thrusting his clasped hands toward the Virgin.  “Please!  I meant you no harm, I meant no one any harm in bringing you here.  I only wanted to help my son.  You can understand that, can’t you?  You had a son yourself.  I’d give anything to make mine well again.”

“Anything?”

“Absolutely anything.”

“Then you must give up everything,” she told him.  “All your possessions—money, property—and all your power and ambitions.  Give everything away to whomever you wish, but give it up, all of it, get it out of your life, out of your control, and your son will live.”

“Charlie will live?” he said in a hushed voice as he struggled to his feet.

“Only if you do what I have said.”

“I will.  I swear I will!”

“We shall see,” the Virgin said.

Dan had gathered enough of his wits and strength to dare to address her.

“Why are you here?” he said, then glanced at Carrie.  “Is it our fault?  Did we cause all this?”

“It is time,” the Virgin said.  “A war of faiths threatens to devastate the world.  It is time for Him to return and speak to His children.  And what I say now shall be heard by all His children.”

TWENTY-FOUR

Kiryat Bialik, Israel

Customs Inspector Dov Sidel sat before the TV in his apartment with his wife Chaya, transfixed by the images of destruction from Jerusalem.  He hadn’t been able to eat or take even a sip of tea since word had come.  The Western Wall . . . gone as if it had never been.

Suddenly the picture dissolved into the face of a woman.

Dov stared at her and she stared back.  Something familiar about her face.  He felt he knew her, and yet he couldn’t quite place her.

Oh, well...

He pressed the channel button on the remote.  The same face.  He pressed again and again and it was the same on every channel, even the unused frequencies.  This woman’s face, in perfect reception.

And then it struck him.  That relic, that body that had been slipped past him as a sculpture, the one he’d reported as being on display in New York.  This woman resembled a younger version of that mummified body.  In fact, the longer he stared at her the more convinced he became.

He was reaching for the phone when Chaya screamed from the kitchen.

‡

Manhattan

Monsignor Vincenzo Riccio sat in his quarters at the Vatican Mission, talking on the phone with the Vatican.  The Holy See was in a state of paralyzed shock, and he was discussing with his superiors the Church’s response after the catastrophes of the last eighteen hours.  He heard a sudden scream from the kitchen, followed by the crash of breaking china.  Then another scream.  He excused himself from the conference call and hurried along the hall to see what was wrong.

The cook was standing by the sink, her hands pressed against her tear-streaked cheeks as she stared at the soapy water.  She was praying in her native Italian.

“Gina?” Vincenzo said, approaching.  “What’s wrong?”

She looked up at him, her eyes filled with fear and wonder, and pointed to the water.

“Maria!”

Vincenzo stepped closer and saw a woman’s face reflected in the surface of the water.  Not Gina’s face.  Another’s.  And immediately he knew who she was.  He felt lightheaded, giddy.  He swung around, looking for someone, anyone to tell, to call over and share this wondrous moment.  But then he saw the same face in the gleaming surface of Gina’s stainless steel mixing bowl, in the shiny side of the pots stacked next to the sink.

She was everywhere, in every reflective surface in the kitchen.

He ran back to the dining room and there was her face again, this time in the mirror over the hutch, and in the silver side of the coffee service.

He ran into the next room where two of his fellow priests crouched before the television, pressing the remote, but on every channel, broadcast and cable, was the same face.

Vincenzo shakily lowered himself to the edge of a chair to sit and wait.

‡

Cashelbanagh , Ireland

Seamus O’Halloran paused on his front stoop and sniffed the clean coolness of the early evening air.  He looked about his empty yard.  After word spread that the monsignor from the Vatican had found a perfectly natural explanation for the tears, the crowds of faithful no longer flocked to Cashelbanagh to see the Weeping Virgin.  In some ways he missed the throngs on his side lawn waiting breathlessly for the next tear, and in other ways he did not.  It was nice to be able to work around the yard without clusters of strangers watching over your shoulder.  And he no longer had those reporter folks asking him the same questions over and over again.

A shame about the Church.  Father Sullivan and most of the women had been in a panic when it dissolved before their eyes this morning.  They’d all waited around, huddled in the bare spot of earth where the nave used to be, but nothing else happened—no thunder, no lightning, no openings in the earth spewing forth demons.  So they’d all gone home.

He wondered if life would ever get back to normal again—whatever normal was.  But at least one thing was sure: Blaney’s still stood.  Sure now if the pub ever vanished into thin air, there would be a tragedy.  Time for him to head down there for a pint.  But first he decided he’d take a look at the side lawn and see how it was coming along.  He strolled around the corner of the house and admired  the grass.  Without the constant trampling of the crowds, it was filling in smooth and green again.  As he turned to go, he glanced up at his grandfather Danny’s painting of the Blessed Mother and froze.

The painting was changing.  He watched, rooted to the ground by terror, as her skin tones darkened while her features ran and rearranged themselves into a different face.

When she smiled at him, Seamus uprooted himself and ran shouting for his wife.

‡

Everywhere...

Gridlock on the streets of Manhattan.  The ever-swirling schools of cars, trucks, taxies, and buses screech to a halt as a face appears in their side- and rearview mirrors.  It is seen dimly on the surface of every windowpane and brightly in every puddle.  It is the same across the country, in the towns, in the cities, in the fields, in schools, barrooms, and on the computer screens of corporate offices.

And across the world, in Sydney, Nara, Beijing, Angkor, Luzon, New Delhi, Mumbai, Baghdad, Tunis, Mecca, Johannesburg, Jerusalem, Bosnia, Quito, Paris, London, and Rome, it is the same.  Every surface capable of reflecting an image is filled with the same face.

For a moment a fascinated world stops, gathers together, and watches.

As she begins to speak, the billions of watchers, even the deaf, even the comatose hear her words and understand.

‡

“I bring you word from our Creator.  The words I say are His, not mine, and He wishes all of you to listen.  I shall call Him ‘He’ simply because that is how we traditionally think of the Creator, but He is neither ‘He’ nor ‘She.’  What can those words mean when there is only one?  And He is the One.  Whether you call him Yahweh or Allah or Vishnu, He cares not, for He has no name.  Whether you visualize him as a man, or a woman, or a feathered serpent, He cares not, for he is pure Being, without shape.

“I was one of you, and for a short time, He was part of me.  We have touched, and for that reason I am allowed to be His voice.  Listen well:

“More than two thousand years ago the Creator allowed an infinitesimal fragment of Himself to gestate in my womb and become human.  He dwelt among a subjugated people who believed in a single God and He planted there his message of kinship between all humans.

“He said He would return and now He has, but He is not pleased with the way His message has been distorted and manipulated and prostituted and profiteered during the intervening millennia.  You all have the same Parent, therefore you are all kin.  He did not create you so that you would divide into warring factions.  Yet you have done just that.

“You, His children, have warred incessantly, with one part or another of your world engaging in slaughter, blind to the glorious future that is yours if you can but learn to see past the walls that divide you.  There is no peace between nations, but a nation is a fabrication.  There must be peace between people.  One to one.  You must learn to recognize the walls that divide you and break them down.  One by one.

“Tear down your walls, children, and find Harmony.

“You have become masters of your world.  You have struggled to the apex of your corner of Creation.  You rule it now.  But with mastery comes obligation.  The rulers of Creation are also responsible for it.

“Remember this: Every living thing, animal, reptile, vegetable, contains a spark of the Creator.  You hold within yourselves the brightest spark, but not the only spark.  It is arrogant of you to think that all other living things were put here merely to be disposed of at your whim.  They were not.  A balance must be struck.  It is a law of Creation that one thing must die that another may live, a law that holds true for all things, for the plants as well as the animals.  But you fail in your responsibility when you wantonly lay waste to the land.  You dim the spark within when you kill for sport and not for sustenance, when you kill for mere vanity to steal another creature’s beauty to wear as your own, or cause a creature pain to test the paints and scents you daub on your bodies.  All life has value.  Yes, there is a hierarchy in that value, but nothing that lives is without it.

“And if you must respect the place of the lower life forms in the world around you, certainly you must cherish the life-right of your fellow humans a thousand-fold more.  You must not diminish, must not damage, must not shorten the lives around you, for in doing so you also smother His spark within yourself.  And nothing dims that spark, nothing hardens the human heart to the value of human life more than the ghastly slaughter of war.  You must halt all war, children, including the unseen war: Never shall there be true peace around you while you wage war on the unborn lives within you.

“Respect all life, children, and find Harmony.

“Abolish your ceremonies, your communions, your sacrifices, real and symbolic; discard your dietary laws, cast off your clerical vestments, disband your sects, cease calling yourselves Catholic or Christian or Jew or Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist, for these customs, these identifications, these sects, these labels serve only to set you apart from your kin.

“Stop your worship. Cease your kneeling, your bowing, your prostrating, your fasts, self-denials, and self-inflicted injuries.  You demean not only yourselves but your Creator when you believe that such obeisance pleases Him.  He did not create you for that.  You insult Him by thinking that He requires worship.  What worship could the Creator of all that is possibly need or take pleasure in?

“Put down your weapons, you murderous, wild-eyed defenders of faith and God.  What sort of God would need defenders, especially such puny and misguided warriors as you?  He is quite capable of defending Himself.

“Silence your prayers.  He will not answer because He will not listen while you call out from within walls that separate you from your kin. Harmony is the only prayer He heeds.

“Abandon your rituals, children, and find Harmony.

“Do not look to Him for guidance or relief; look instead to each other.

“Your churches, your temples, your mosques have been removed, for these are the most tangible and obvious walls between you.  Gather now instead in the streets and parks and squares where there are no walls.  Try to reach Him by reaching each other.

“Discard your Bible, your Koran, your Torah, for each is only partly true, and al lead you into the belief that you have found the One True Path to God, or the One True Voice that will catch His ear.  You have not.  And that delusion raises another wall, a wall of exclusivity.  He did not create you to be divided.

“Forsake your dogma children, and find Harmony.

“I say again, use your own lives well, and respect each life around you.  You are all kin.  Touch one another.  You are all living this life together.  And so you must all work together toward creating Heaven.  It is possible.  You have the power.  You need only use it.

“If you do not, if you continue along the same path you have trod these thousands of years, you will create a Hell for yourselves and your children.

“Look not for a Third Coming.  And act not in fear of eternal reward or punishment.  Your reward or punishment is here.  This is your world, these are your lives.  He has given them to you.  Use them well, make the most of them, make them mean something, make them count.  For this is your Heaven or Hell.  You have the power to make it either.  The choice is yours.

“Do not wait for the Rapture of the faithful, or for the Tribulation of the unbeliever.  They will not come from on high.  Your rapture arises from each other, as do all your tribulations.  Heaven or Hell will be of your own making.  You have but to choose.

“Here, now, today marks the end of the age of faith and belief, and the beginning of a new age: the Age of Knowledge.  For everything I say here is being recorded a million times, and thus you will have no further need for faith.  You will know there is a God and that He is watching.  Act accordingly, children.

“Let this then be the whole of the law:

“Find Harmony, children, and you will find Heaven.”

TWENTY-FIVE

Paraiso

Dan had listened raptly.  She’d been speaking to the world, he knew, to all of humankind, but he’d felt as if she were speaking only to him.  For what she’d said reflected exactly his innermost thoughts and feelings.  Because of his vows, his membership in the priesthood, he’d been afraid to vocalize them, even to himself.  But now that she had said them, he could acknowledge what he’d sensed, known all along.

He wondered if that was why he was here, in this house, in her presence—in His presence—why he’d been with her all along.

As the Virgin finished speaking she touched Carrie’s bowed head and said, “Come, my devoted one.”

Carrie rose to her feet.  The Virgin held out her hand and Carrie took it.

The Virgin said,  “Our time here is done.”

Our time is done.  What did she mean by that?

Dan swallowed and addressed her again.

“Wait...please.  Can’t you...bring her back?  Make her live again?  You can do that, can’t you?”

The Virgin shook her head.  “Her time here is through.  She is coming with me.”

“With you?  You’re taking her away?  Where?”  Dan felt a sob building in his chest.  He still hadn’t come to terms with Carrie’s death.  “Oh, please.  I’ve only just begun to know her.  You can’t take her away from me now.”

“I haven’t taken her away.  One of your brothers did that.”

And then Carrie and the Virgin began to rise.

When they were floating half a dozen feet above the floor, they began to drift toward the ruined windows, toward the sea, toward the towering column of water that waited for them.

“Wait!” cried another voice—the man who called himself Kesev, whom the Mother called Iscariot.  “Mother, please wait!”

Their seaward drift slowed.

“Yes, Judas?”

“What of me?”

“What of you, Judas?”

“Am I to be left here alone?  Haven’t I suffered enough?  Two thousand years, Mother!  Haven’t I earned forgiveness?”

“Forgiveness does not come from me, Judas.  You know that.”

“Then intercede for me, Mother.  Don’t leave me here alone.  Everyone I’ve ever known has left me.  Please...I do not deserve this anymore.”

The Virgin paused, as if listening, then extended her free hand toward Judas.

“Come.”

Judas rushed forward, leaped to catch her hand, and when their fingers touched, he floated up to join her, clutching her hand in both of his.

Dan saw tears in Judas’s eyes, and felt them well up in his own.  Carrie...Carrie was leaving.

He fought the urge to call her back, knowing she wouldn’t, couldn’t respond.  He’d lost her—not now, not today, but yesterday, when Emilio had put a 9mm hole in her heart.

The three of them drifted through the ruined window frames, out into the storm, toward the gargantuan swirling, roaring column of water that loomed outside.

Dan ran to the frames, clung to one, leaning over the precipice that fell away to the pounding surf below.  He sobbed unashamedly and let the tears flow down his cheeks.  He watched longingly as their progress accelerated and their retreating forms shrank.

Soon they were lost in the mist.

Moments later, the cyclopean waterspout began to retreat, shrinking as it moved off into the Pacific.  Gradually it thinned from a thousand yards across to a slender tornado-like funnel, and then it was gone.

The storm, too, was gone.  Magically, the encircling winds died, the fog melted away, the clouds dispersed.  Midday sunlight burst free and flooded the sky, warming Dan’s face and spirit.

He clung there a few moments longer, wiping his eyes, gathering his wits, girding himself to face a world without Carrie.  Finally, when he turned away, he saw Senator Crenshaw leaning over the hospital bed, whispering to his unconscious son.

“Did you hear that, Charlie?  You’re going to be well again.  All I’ve got to do is give away everything I own.  But that’s no problem, Charlie.  I’ll set up trusts for everything, even for Paraiso.  That way all my assets will be out of my control, but we can still live here.  And I’ll put my nomination bid on hold.  I won’t do anything until you’re better, Charlie.  After that, you’ll see the goddamndest campaign you ever saw in your life.  You just wait and see, Charlie.”

As Dan walked past he couldn’t resist saying, “You just don’t get it, do you.”

“What?” Crenshaw said, straightening.  “What do you mean?”

“Weren’t you listening?”

“Of course, I—”

“Then think about what you heard, fool.”

Dan could not spare any more time here.  A new world waited outside.  He could feel it.

He hurried up the stairs and burst out into the new fresh air.  He had no idea what he’d find when he got back to civilization, but he knew the events of the past few moments would change it forever.

For better or for worse?  And for how long?  He would see.

He dearly wished Carrie were here to explore it with him.  And maybe she was.  She’d touched his life so deeply, he knew he’d always carry a part of her with him.

He thrust his hands into his pockets and realized that Carrie was still with him in a more tangible way.  He pulled out her baggies of powder and clippings and stared at them.  Whatever he found out there in the new world, he was sure now that the new age of miracles was not over yet.

Perhaps it had just begun.

Find Harmony, children

F. PAUL WILSON is an award-winning, NY Times bestselling novelist whose work spans horror, adventure, medical thrillers, science fiction, young adult, and virtually everything between.  His novels have been translated into twenty-four languages. Currently he is best known as creator of the urban mercenary Repairman Jack. (http://www.repairmanjack.com)

Also by F. Paul Wilson

The Adversary Cycle

The Keep

The Tomb

The Touch

Reborn

Reprisal

Nightworld

Repairman Jack

The Tomb

Legacies

Conspiracies

All the Rage

Hosts

The Haunted Air

Gateways

Crisscross

Infernal

Harbingers

Bloodline

By the Sword

Ground Zero

Fatal Error

The Dark at the End

Nightworld

Quick Fixes – Tales of Repairman Jack

The Teen Trilogy

Jack: Secret Histories

Jack: Secret Circles

Jack: Secret Vengeance

The Early Years Trilogy

Cold City

Dark City

Fear City

The LaNague Federation Series

Healer

Wheels Within Wheels

An Enemy of the State

Dydeetown World

The Tery

Other Novels

Black Wind

Sibs

The Select

Virgin

Implant

Deep as the Marrow

Mirage (with Matthew J. Costello)

Nightkill (with Steven Spruill)

Masque (with Matthew J. Costello)

Sims

The Fifth Harmonic

Midnight Mass

The Proteus Cure (with Tracy L. Carbone)

A Necessary End (with Sarah Pinborough)

Short Fiction

Soft & Others

The Barrens & Others

The Christmas Thingy

Aftershock & Others

The Peabody-Ozymandias Traveling Circus & Oddity Emporium

Quick Fixes – Tales of Repairman Jack

Sex Slaves of the Dragon Tong

Editor

Freak Show

Diagnosis: Terminal

The Hogben Chronicles (with Pierce Watters)

Omnibus Editions

The Complete LaNague

Calling Dr. Death (3 medical thrillers)

HAUNTED HOUSE

A novel of terror

Jack Kilborn & J.A. Konrath

BEYOND AFRAID…

It was an experiment in fear.

Eight people, each chosen because they lived through a terrifying experience. Survivors. They don’t scare easily. They know how to fight back.

BEYOND TRAPPED…

Each is paid a million dollars to spend one night in a house. The old Butler House, where those grisly murders occurred so many years ago. A house that is supposedly haunted.

BEYOND ENDURANCE…

They can take whatever they want with them. Religious items. Survival gear. Weapons. All they need to do is last the night.

But there is something evil in this house. Something very evil, and very real. And when the dying starts, it comes with horrifying violence and brutal finality.

There are scarier things than ghosts.

Things that torment you slowly and delight in your screams.

Things that won’t let you get out alive.

HAUNTED HOUSE

People are just dying to leave.

Jack Kilborn, author of AFRAID, TRAPPED, and ENDURANCE, brings back some favorite characters from those earlier novels and puts them through his own unique brand of hell. One that hurts real bad. One that will scare you to death.

Are you brave enough?

HAUNTED HOUSE

Copyright © 2013 by Joe Konrath

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the authors.

May 2013

This novel is for Maria

Prologue

Roy Lewis cleared the doorway, then spun as something in the darkness lunged at him.

He fired, a double-tap at the approaching center mass, but it kept coming. Before he could flinch away the thing hit him in his outstretched Glock.

It took Roy milliseconds to process what it was, and then revulsion coursed through him.

A body bag.

Black plastic with a silver zipper. Hanging from a chain.

But something was wrong with it. The weight was… off.

Roy aimed his flashlight up at the ceiling, the tactical beam cutting through the ever-present dark of the house, and saw the rail system that had swung the bag into him. Pulleys and springs and a steel track, all automatic. Probably triggered by a motion sensor.

He reached out and gave the bag a tentative squeeze.

Foam rubber.

Not a real body. Just a goddamn Halloween prop.

Roy chewed his inner cheek, heart hammering, realizing he’d wasted two valuable bullets on a dime store scare.

Only one bullet left. Then he was out of ammo.

Roy checked his watch. Not even 4am yet. Hours to go before dawn. Might as well be days.

Breathe. Remember to breathe.

He took in air through his nostrils, tried to let it out slowly. His hands were shaking, and sweat was stinging his eyes despite the cool temperature. Roy holstered his sidearm, and drew his KA-BAR knife from his belt sheath, clutching it to his chest.

Okay, stay calm. Find a place to hole up. Someplace you can defend. Where they can’t sneak up behind you.

A snort escaped his nose before Roy could stop it. All damn night he’d been searching for a safe place in this hell-on-earth. But there were no safe places. Every room, every corridor, in this damned house was lethal. Maybe, if the others were still alive, they could have protected each other. But that hadn’t worked out, and Roy was pretty sure he was the only one left.

He thought back to his military days, before he became a cop. The Q course for Special Forces, the hardest training in the world. Desert Storm in Iraq. Then over a decade on the street, working his way up from beat cop to homicide detective. He was good, and his past had prepared him for a lot.

But not for this.

Nothing could have prepared him for this.

Roy sucked in another breath through clenched teeth. The air was musty, foul, like old running shoes mixed with…

Body odor.

Strong, noxious body odor that wasn’t coming from Roy.

He flinched.

Roy knew that smell. Knew where it came from.

That’s when he heard it.

Giggling.

High-pitched. Almost childlike.

But that’s not a child.

“Oh, no,” Roy whispered. “Not this again.”

Roy waited, hoping, praying, it had been his imagination.

The darkness remained silent.

You’re freaking out, man. Imagining shit. You need to keep it together if you want to—

“Hee hee hee hee.”

Not imagination. This was real.

Real, and coming somewhere in the unlit room.

Somewhere close.

Roy stumbled backward, his bladder constricting, and then fell as his foot stepped into a hole in the floor.

He landed on his ass, strained to get his foot free, and the pain came hard and fast.

Sharp points. Stabbing through his pants, into the flesh of his calf.

A punji trap.

The hole contained spikes, pointed at a downward angle, trapping his foot there. The harder he tried to pull away, the deeper the spikes dug into his leg.

“Hee hee hee.”

Roy swung his flashlight beam, locking onto the sound.

The giggling man who had been stalking Roy through the house for the last two hours was standing only a few meters away. Roy could see him clearly now, for the first time. He was tall, over six feet, wearing a black rubber gas mask that obscured his face. His chest was bare, covered in dried blood. All he wore was stained white underwear, and combat boots, their laces untied.

In the man’s hand was a meat cleaver.

Roy reacted viscerally, immediately trying to scramble away, the spikes digging further into his calf. He cried out in pain, then stared at his stalker.

“Hee hee hee.”

The Giggler didn’t move closer. He simply stood there, swaying slowly from side to side. The BO coming off him coated Roy’s tongue.

Roy pawed for his sidearm, drawing it and pointing the weapon at the man.

“Get the fuck away from me! I swear I’ll kill you!”

The man stared.

“I said get away!”

He continued swaying. Staring.

“Hee hee hee.”

Roy hadn’t signed on for this. It was supposed to be simple. A way to get ahead, provide for his daughter. But the nightmare of the last few hours, the horrors he’d been through, was almost beyond comprehension.

“Someone help me!” he shouted to the house.

The house didn’t answer. But the Giggler did.

“Hee hee.”

Roy reached up, grabbed the sticky electrode on his temple, and tore it off out of defiance. Did the same with the one on his chest.

The giggling man watched, his expression hidden behind his gas mask.

“What the hell do you want?” Roy pleaded.

The man raised the cleaver—

—and placed it against his own chest.

What the hell is this guy going to…?

He drew the cleaver downward, splitting his skin open. The blood flowed, fast and red, soon drenching the man’s soiled underwear.

“Hee hee hee.”

Roy watched, slack-jawed, as the man continued to cut himself, making Xs on his abdomen. Over his nipples. Across his belly button. It wasn’t long before his upper body looked like a dropped plate of spaghetti.

Pain be damned, Roy pulled his attention away from the freak and began to tug on his trapped leg, trying to free himself. His heart was beating so quickly it felt like it was going to break his ribs, and the man’s giggling got louder the more he mutilated himself. But try as he might, Roy couldn’t get his leg out of the hole.

Then the giggling stopped. Replaced by wheezing.

Fast, wet wheezing.

Not wanting to look, but unable to stop himself, Roy once again directed his flashlight at the man.

He’d stopped cutting. And instead, the giggling man had a hand inside his underwear, using the blood as a lubricant while he stroked himself.

Roy shook his head, like a dog after a walk in the rain.

No. Oh no no no no. This is not happening. This is NOT happening.

But it was happening. This wasn’t some elaborate prank. Some gag where a TV crew was going to jump out and shake his hand for being a trooper. It wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t a hallucination.

He’d watched people die tonight. Die horribly. And he was going to be next.

Roy adjusted his flashlight, staring into the hole that refused to release him. He saw five metal rods, digging into his leg from various angles. With a trembling hand, he lowered the KA-BAR knife and tried to cut the first rod free.

The steel was too thick.

Roy took a breath and held it.

Then he gouged the knife into his leg, trying to pry out the bar.

Soon Roy’s screams drowned out the moans coming from his stalker, but even after slicing his calf almost to the bone, the rod continued to hold him.

“Hee hee hee.”

Roy looked up at the Giggler, who had moved several steps closer. He’d apparently finished playing with himself, and was now rubbing his hand across his chest, digging his finger into the cuts and following their lengths, over and over. Like a child finger painting.

Roy aimed the Glock at him, trying to steady his shaking hand.

One bullet. Make it count…

He squeezed the trigger, deadeye on the man’s center mass—

Felt the gun kick—

Got him! I got him! I—

But the giggling man didn’t even flinch. It was as if the bullet passed right through him.

Like he’s a ghost.

He giggled again, “hee hee hee”, and Roy giggled as well. He thought of all the other rounds he’d fired that night, sure he’d hit targets, and now finally understood what had happened.

Bullets can’t kill ghosts.

He raised the KA-BAR like it was a crucifix warding off vampires.

“You want me! Come get me!”

But the giggling man—or whatever it was—just stood there. Watching.

“You gonna just stand there?”

“Hee hee hee hee hee.”

“DO SOMETHING!”

It stopped swaying, and through the damper of its gas mask said, in a deep, wet voice,

“Iiiiiiiiii wiiiilllll.”

The throb in Roy’s leg began to abide, replaced by a tingling numbness. His head began to cloud.

Blood loss? Exhaustion?

Roy closed his eyes. He knew if he passed out, things would only get worse. Being at the mercy of that thing was unthinkable, and there were others in the house even worse.

Roy closed his eyes.

He thought about his ex-wife. Their daughter. She only saw her daddy twice a month, due to his wife’s overzealous lawyer.

Now she’d never see him again.

The image in Roy’s head was fuzzy, growing fuzzier.

“I’m sorry,” he told his child, his eyes brimming with tears.

Then the Giggler pounced.

FOUR DAYS LATER

Cleveland , Ohio

Mal

Mallory Dieter knew by his wife’s breathing that she was also awake.

He thought about reaching for her, holding her close, but she didn’t like being touched while trying to sleep. It startled her, even made her yell sometimes. At three in the morning, even a whisper from Mal could make Deb jump.

Mal understood this. Intimately.

Because he felt exactly the same way.

The bed was the best money could buy. The kind where each side could be adjusted for maximum comfort. No bedframe, so nothing could hide under it. Expensive pillows, some with goose down, some with memory foam. Sheets with a 400 thread count. A ceiling fan that provided a gentle breeze, and calming white noise.

But all that wasn’t nearly enough.

Mal shifted, slowly so he didn’t scare her, letting Deb know they were both in the same boat.

“Need another Xanax?” Deb whispered. “I’ll be up. I can watch you.”

Often the only way either got to sleep was when one offered to watch over the other.

“Gotta work early. But you can take one, and I’ll watch you.”

Deb turned, rolling against him, the weight of her body both reassuring and confining. She trusted him enough to hook her thigh over him—a thigh missing the calf below the knee. Years ago, a fall while mountain climbing had taken Deb’s legs.

But that wasn’t the fear that kept her awake.

Mal knew it was something far worse.

A fear he also shared.

The Rushmore Inn.

He resisted her touch, wanting to push her away, hating himself for the feeling. During the daytime, he couldn’t get enough of touching her, holding her, caressing her.

But nights were different. At night he didn’t want to be touched, held, or otherwise confined. He couldn’t even use heavy blankets. It made him feel trapped, helpless. As if he were still tied to that table and…

Mal shuddered.

Nights were a bitch.

“You up for something else?” Deb asked, trailing her fingernails down his belly, to his boxer shorts. Mal closed his eyes, tried to live in the moment, tried to push away the past. But the only part of him the alprazolam seemed to relax was the part Deb was rubbing.

“Sorry, hon. The pill.”

Deb pulled her hand back.

“I could do you,” he said, reaching for her. “Maybe my body will get the hint.”

Mal moved his left hand down, stroked her. Deb didn’t respond.

“Damn Xanax,” Deb breathed. “Turns us into a couple of eunuchs.”

Mal stopped his efforts. Stared at the ceiling fan.

He sighed. “Our lives would be perfect if we didn’t have to sleep.”

“I hear someone is working on a pill for that.”

“I’m sick of pills, but sign me up for that one.”

He thought about having the nightlight discussion again. Mal found it damn near impossible to fall asleep with the four nightlights Deb had in the bedroom. There were practically bright enough to read a book by.

The problem was Deb had panic attacks in the dark.

Or maybe that was just a way to blame Deb for his insomnia, because Mal hated the dark, too.

“We can get up,” Deb said. “Play some rummy.”

They’d done that the previous two nights. But Mal knew Deb was as exhausted as he was. And with exhaustion came crankiness, frustration, misery. Yesterday, they’d both gone to separate parts of the house because of some stupid fight over how to best shuffle cards.

“We need sleep, hon. You take another pill. At least one of us should get some rest.”

“It’s not rest with the pills. It’s more like a coma. I hate them.”

“So do I. But…”

Mal didn’t need to finish the sentence. They both knew how it ended.

But I hate the nightmares more.

They’d been to doctors. Specialists. Shrinks. Mal knew his wife shared his condition.

PTSD. Posttraumatic stress disorder.

The newest research revealed brain chemistry actually changed in response to traumatic experience. And at the Rushmore Inn, Deb and Mal survived the most traumatic experience imaginable.

“We got a little sleep on Saturday,” Deb said.

Mal grunted mmm-hmm. He didn’t mention that during one of her night terrors, Deb’s moans and cries kept waking him up, even though he’d taken several pills because of the weekend off.

“Maybe we’re doing this wrong,” Mal said. “Maybe we need to take speed instead.”

His wife laughed, breaking some of the tension. “Speed?”

“Or some coke. Instead of sleeping, we party all night.”

“I tried speed once when I was training, to boost endurance. I finished a marathon, then cleaned the house top to bottom. It was awful.”

Mal smiled. “Awful? We should both take some, clean out that basement.”

“Do you even know where to get amphetamines?”

“I work for a newspaper. We newsies know all the lowlifes.”

“So we should embrace our insomnia. That’s your solution.”

“It isn’t a solution, hon. Just a silly idea.”

Deb didn’t respond right away. And when she did, her voice was so sad it made Mal ache.

“There are no solutions.”

They laid there, in silence, Mal unable to come up with a solution. Deb was correct. They were broken, both their bodies and their minds, and there didn’t seem any way to fix them.

That’s when someone pounded on the door.

The sound paralyzed Mal, adrenaline ripping through his body making his heart seem ready to pop. But his arms and legs locked as surely as if they’d been bound there.

He couldn’t move.

Couldn’t breathe.

After the initial startle, his mind went haywire with possibilities. Who would be at the door at 3am? Had those terrible people from the Rushmore Inn finally found him? Had they come to finish the job?

Unable to suck in any air, unable to turn his head, Mal’s eyes flicked over to Deb and saw she was similarly frightened stiff.

A second ticked by.

Another.

I’ve got to get up. I’ve got to—

The pounding sound came again, even louder, a white hot spike of adrenaline snapping Mal out of his catatonia. He immediately jerked upright in bed, reaching for his nightstand, for the 9mm inside the drawer. But in his fear and haste he reached with the wrong hand, the one missing above the wrist. He quickly switched, pulling out the gun, as Deb clambered for her artificial legs, propped next to the wall.

She squeaked out, “Do you think it’s—”

“Shh.”

Holding his breath, Mal strained to hear more sounds. He wondered, fleetingly, if this was one of his frequent nightmares. But they always revolved around him being strapped to the table, watching those horrid videos. He was always at the Rushmore in his bad dreams. He’d never had a nightmare that took place in his house.

This wasn’t a dream.

This was really happening.

He quickly switched his thoughts to other, safer possibilities. A drunk neighbor, mistaking their house for his. Local teenagers, pranking people by knocking on the door then running away. A relative, maybe his brother from Florida, dropping by unannounced. Police, coming over to tell Mal he’d left the headlights on in the car parked in the driveway.

Anything other than them…

Deb was trembling so badly she couldn’t get her legs on.

“Mal… help me…”

But for Mal to help, he had to drop the 9mm—he only had one hand. And he didn’t think he’d be able to let go of it, even if he tried.

“Mal…”

“Deb, I…”

Then the phone rang.

Deb screamed at the sound, and Mal felt his bladder clench. He looked at the gun, clutched in his trembling fist.

If it is them, I know what to do.

Deb first. One in the temple while she’s looking away.

Then me.

Because there is no way in hell they’re taking us back there.

Grand Haven, Michigan

Sara

Something awoke Sara Randhurst from deep, intoxicated sleep.

She peeked an eye open, confused, her bleary eyes focusing on the clock radio next to the bed.

3:15am.

Without thinking, she grabbed the glass next to it, raising her head and gulping down the melted ice, savoring the faint flavor of Southern Comfort.

Okay. Focus, Sara. Why am I awake?

She had no idea. In fact, she had no memory of how she’d gotten into bed. The very last thing she remembered was…

Was what?

FedEx. The damned letter from the bank. Then opening up the bottle and crawling inside.

She snorted.

Sure. Blame the bank. As if I need another excuse to drink.

A banging sound startled Sara, making her yelp.

The door.

Who could be at the door?

She thought, fleetingly, about the letter. Could they be kicking her out now? In the middle of the night? Weren’t there laws against that?

Sara immediately dismissed the idea. Tipsy as she still was, she knew banks didn’t foreclose at three in the morning.

That left… who?

Sara had no family that would be visiting. The only people who still cared about her, Tyrone and Cindy, had moved to LA years ago. The last contact she’d had with them had been a Christmas card this past year. Or maybe the year before. The holidays all blended together.

Another knock. Loud and urgent.

Sara flipped on the bedroom light. Her eyes were automatically drawn to Jack’s empty crib in the corner of the bedroom, a blanket draped over the top because she couldn’t bear to look at it. At the same time couldn’t bear to throw it away. The blanket looked like a shroud.

Then she searched around for the bottle of SoCo, hoping she’d brought it into the bedroom with her. Sara found it, on the floor.

Empty.

Shit. That was the last one.

One more bang on the door. The big bad wolf, trying to blow the house down. Or in this case, the trailer.

Fuck him. There were scarier things than wolves.

Much scarier things.

Sara pawed at the nightstand drawer, pulling it open, digging through magazines for the snub nosed .38 she kept there. A gift from Tyrone. Not registered, but it wasn’t like she could get into any more trouble than she already was in.

But the gun wasn’t there. Sara had a fleeting recollection of being at the kitchen table, crying and drunk, the gun in her mouth.

Shit. I left it in the kitchenette.

Funny, how she routinely contemplated suicide, yet now that her life might actually be threatened she wanted the gun for protection.

Maybe she had some fight in her after all.

Sara gripped the bottle by the neck, holding it like a club, and eased her feet out of bed. She stood up, wobbly, but a pro at walking under the influence. Two steps and she was to the bedroom door. Two more and she was next to the bathroom.

Movement, to her right, and Sara screamed and swung, the bottle connecting with the mirror hanging on the bathroom door.

It spiderwebbed with a tinkling crunch, and Sara saw herself in a dozen different triangles, hair wild, eyes red, wearing a dirty sweatshirt crusted with old shrimp chow mien that she’s apparently eaten while drunk. Once upon a time, she’d been clean and pretty. Looking at herself now, Sara guessed homeless shelters would turn her away for being too gross.

Another knock, so close it felt like a full-body blow. The SoCo bottle had survived the impact with the mirror, and she clutched the neck even tighter as she made her decision.

There is no way in hell I’m answering that door.

Instead she backed away, turning in the other direction, heading for the phone on the wall. Right before she snatched up the receiver, it rang.

Sara stared, the lump in her throat making it impossible to draw a breath. She remembered the fear she’d felt on the island, and the same sick, familiar feeling spread over her.

Terror.

Pure, paralyzing terror.

Hand shaking so badly it looked like a palsy, Sara’s finger hovered over the speakerphone button.

The phone rang again, making her whimper.

Do I press it?

Do I?

She jabbed at it, hitting the wrong key. Then she tried again.

The speakerphone hissed at her, and a deep male voice barked, “Open the door, Sara.”

Sara wet her sweatpants.

Mililani, Hawaii

Josh

Josh VanCamp gasped, drawing air through his mouth because a tiny hand was pinching his nose closed.

He opened his eyes, staring at the capuchin monkey sitting on his chest. Josh brushed the primate’s paw away from his face.

“Mathison, what are—”

The monkey put a finger over Josh’s mouth, telling him to be quiet. A moment later, Woof began to bark.

His warning bark. Strangers were near.

“Someone’s here,” Josh said.

The monkey nodded. Josh glanced at his wife, lying next to him. “Fran?”

“I’m up.”

She was already swinging her legs out of the bed, pressing the intercom button on the wall.

“Duncan,” she said, “panic room. Grab Woof.”

Her son responded instantly. “Meet you there.”

Josh placed Mathison on his shoulder, and the monkey pulled Josh’s hoodie around him. He was frightened.

Josh wasn’t. He had too much to do.

He slipped on the boat shoes he kept next to the bed—thick leather and tough rubber soles—and reached for the closet door.

“Hon?” he asked.

“Ready.”

Josh reached inside, grabbing one of the Browning Maxus autoloader shotguns, tossing it over his shoulder like they’d practiced so many times, not bothering to see if his wife caught it as he reached for its companion.

They walked the hallway in standard two-by-two cover formation, Josh favoring the left, Fran the right. The air conditioning kicked on, normal for nighttime in Hawaii. Other than that the house was quiet. Still.

Josh passed one of the burglar alarm panels, not bothering to punch in and access surveillance, confident the animals’ senses were good reason enough to get into the panic room. Since they’d moved here five years previous, the monkey and dog had had far fewer false alarms than the ten thousand dollar system they’d installed. If this turned out to be another, no harm in it. They were due for a late night drill later in the week anyway.

Depending on your past, one man’s paranoia was another man’s common sense. And after what the trio had lived through in Safe Haven, Wisconsin, Josh couldn’t think of a single thing they’d done to keep themselves safe that qualified as paranoia.

They reached the door, and Josh stared at the fake light switch. In the up position, meaning Duncan was already inside. He swiveled the switch to the right and punched in the numeric code on the revealed keypad. The door latch snicked opened, and Fran went down the stairs first, Josh locking and sealing the door behind him, tight as a bank vault.

Basements were rare on the Big Island. Blasting through the solid rock was difficult, and deemed foolhardy in light of the constant threat of storms. But Josh’s basement had its own industrial sump pump that protected against flooding, run by its own generator that worked separate from the main grid.

Josh followed Fran into the equipment room. Duncan was standing at the ready, a Glock 13 in his hand and pointed downward. He had the same angular features as Fran, same eyes, but he was growing into his masculinity and had been letting the peach fuzz on his upper lip accumulate even though they’d given him a Norelco for Christmas. Like his mother, his expression was hard, but without fear. Even though Josh was only a father by marriage, he beamed with pride at Duncan’s resolve. The kid had gone through hell, and had come out the other side stronger.

Woof, their fat beagle, looked up at them, tongue out, tail wagging. Mathison hopped off of Josh’s shoulder and sprang onto the dog’s back, like a miniature jockey.

Duncan already had the monitors live, and the perimeter sensors had switched on Camera 2. The front porch. They watched as two men in suits knocked on the door. Caucasian, mid-thirties, ties and sport coats too formal for the humidity.

“They’re holding,” Fran said, touching the screen, tapping the weapon bulges in their jackets.

Josh studied their footwear. Combat boots, incongruous to the tailored suits.

“Military?” Duncan asked.

The haircuts certainly were, which wasn’t a good omen.

“Smart guess. Or maybe they’re private. Or…”

Josh almost added, “something else” but he knew there was no need. His family was already thinking it.

He hit the camera’s microphone switch. The equipment room filled with the loud mating call of the coqui tree frog, which sounded a lot like digital beeping. Beneath that cacophony, katydids and crickets, and the far off screech and hoot of a barn owl.

“What next?” Duncan asked.

A fair question. In all their drills, they’d never prepared for someone knocking at the door at 3am.

“Now I press a button,” Josh said, “open up the trap door that sends them into the alligator pit.”

Duncan stared at Josh, his teenaged face confused. He rolled his eyes when he realized his stepfather was kidding. Again, Josh felt a stab of pride. Duncan could have been freaking out, but he understood how safe they were in the panic room. If needed, they could stay down there for a week. They had food and water, bunk beds, a toilet, a TV, and a computer. When they’d first built the room they’d slept down there as a family for several nights, making a party out of it so Duncan got used to the space. Popcorn and staying up late, watching movies and playing videogames. A safe area, not a scary one.

But his son’s question was on the money. If they’d been under attack—a highly conceivable possibility considering their past—the next step would be to call the police, followed by the Feds. If that didn’t produce the desired results, the media was next.

So far, the VanCamps had lived up to their part of the deal and kept silent. If threatened, Josh had memorized all the numbers for all the major news outlets on the Big Island. He could burn several key people if forced to.

Josh didn’t want it to come to that. He and Fran had talked long and hard about bringing down those responsible for the genocide at Safe Haven, but in the end they opted to stay quiet for Duncan’s sake. If they told the press what they knew, there would be reprisals.

He stared at the two men on the monitor. Is that what this was? A team sent to silence them? If so, why were they knocking on the front door? Why not an entire commando team? Or an airstrike to take out the whole house?

None of the other monitors were live, meaning the proximity cameras hadn’t been tripped. Josh fired them up anyway to take a look.

No armed killers on the property.

No one at all.

Just the two guys on the front porch.

“I guess we ask them what they want,” Fran said.

Josh looked at his wife, saw that strength in her eyes he admired so much. Someone else might have been hysterical at this point. Crying or catatonic or ranting in fear. And he wouldn’t have blamed her if she reacted that way. But Fran was a rock, in many ways stronger than he was, and the love he felt for her right then gave him strength as well.

Josh hit the intercom button.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Frank

Dr. Frank Belgium yawned, needing sleep. He was grading an assignment, trying to figure out how this student had gotten into advanced biology. The paper had something to do with the ozone layer and photosynthesis. But the experiment made no sense, and the conclusions were unfounded and in several cases outright fabrication.

Belgium took one of the student’s paragraphs and typed it verbatim into Google. After checking the results, he tried several more times with other sections.

“Dumb dumb dumb.”

The student had plagiarized published experiments. And to disguise his cheating, he’d mixed and matched several different papers, without any apparent logic or reason.

Belgium printed the Google file, stapled the pages to the paper, and wrote F on the top, along with, Scientists cite their sources. They also try to make sense.

He was about to move onto the next paper, but stopped himself and added, How did you get into advanced biology?

It was a fair question. But as he stared at his handwritten words, Belgium wondered, And how did I wind up teaching advanced biology?

A combination of bad decisions and bad luck. But it was better than many alternatives—

something Frank knew all about. And being a biology professor at a state college still allowed him to do some genetic research. Not nearly on the same level as he used to, but enough to keep his mind active and hands nimble.

He frowned at the title of the next paper, Plants’ Reactions to Household Chemicals, and was ready to delve in when someone knocked at the door.

Oh, Jesus. He’s found me.

Belgium thought about the gun he’d always meant to buy, the one he’d use to shoot himself if the past ever came calling. But he’d been afraid to buy the gun. Just as well, because as frightened as he was right now, he’d be just as afraid to use it on himself.

It had been a while since he’d had to confront this particular fear. There had been nightmares, of course. Plenty of them since leaving Samhain. He hadn’t spoken with his friends, Sun and Andy, since their wedding last March, and those were the only people he could talk to about their shared, terrifying experience. Because if he did mention it to anyone else, he’d be shot for treason.

Maybe that was the solution. If evil was at the door, Belgium could call the newspapers, spill everything, and then the US government would kill him. But the government was inefficient, bordering on inept, and would probably take days or weeks to get the job done. In the meantime, he’d be going through all sorts of unimaginable hell. Which made Belgium wonder, for the umpteenth time, why he hadn’t ever manned up and just bought a damned gun.

“Dr. Belgium! Dr. Frank Belgium! It’s the Secret Service.”

Belgium’s fear of demons vanished. But another fear climbed into its place. If this was the Secret Service, there could be only one reason they would call on him.

“The doctor isn’t here,” he called, trying to disguise his voice and make it sound lower. Which, in hindsight, was silly, because they didn’t know what he sounded like in the first place. “I am his his his… lover.” Belgium’s eyes cast around his desk, looking for a suitable name. He found it on his computer monitor, the logo. “His lover, Vizio. Why are you bothering me at such an hour?”

“If you don’t open the door, Doctor, we will break in.”

Belgium shuddered. He didn’t want to go anywhere with the Secret Service, because it wouldn’t be anywhere pleasant. And how could he be sure it was the Secret Service at all? The evil that Belgium had confronted in the past was wily.

“I am Vizio,” he said, lamely. “The Doctor is out of the country at a biology symposium. I I I am staying here to water his plants.”

The door busted inward.

Belgium gasped.

He was right.

It wasn’t the Secret Service.

Chicago, Illinois

Tom

Tom Mankowski squinted at his Kindle Fire, determined to read the screen without making the font size larger. The author, some guy with a bunch of letters after his name who supposedly was on Dr. Phil a few times, was writing about the importance of intimacy in a romantic relationship.

No shit. I didn’t need to spend $14.99 to figure that out.

The ebook was called Twenty Tips For Keeping Long Distance Relationships Fresh, and was the first self-help book Tom had ever bought. The price surprised him—he thought ebooks should be much cheaper than that—but the topic was important enough to warrant the purchase.

Unfortunately, the content so far had been less than revelatory.

Call and text often? Check.

Send gifts? Check.

Phone sex? They’d actually taken it once step further, and used video chat on Skype.

Visit when possible?

Tom looked to the right, to the empty side of the bed. Joan hadn’t been over in two weeks. And it had been two months since he’s visited her in LA. In the past hundred days he’d seen her only eight.

Tom smiled every time he got a text from her. It warmed his heart when Joan FedExed a screener DVD of some film she’d produced. And the site of her in a skimpy negligee, doing her best to talk dirty to him on his computer screen but constantly breaking character and giggling—well, it beat the hell out of Internet porn.

But it didn’t beat being with her. Nothing beat being with her.

Tom was lonely. And the loneliness was made worse because he had someone who could fill that void. But she wouldn’t quit her job to move to Chicago, and he wouldn’t quit his to move to L.A.

He flipped the electronic page and read, Plan a surprise visit.

Tom had some vacation days he needed to burn or else he’d lose them. But Joan was in the middle of a shoot, and that meant 80 hour work weeks for her. Still, he could fly to California and be there for her at the end of her day, if only to sleep next to her for a few nights. It was better than lying in bed alone, reading an overpriced book by some PhD with a startling grasp of the obvious.

He blinked, yawned, and damned his pride, pressing the Aa setting on the screen to enlarge the font to a size 8. It beat getting eyeglasses. Then he adjusted his pillow and settled in to read about playing online games together.

Yeah. That’s what Joan would be into. Us fragging each other in an Xbox Halo death match. How the hell did this guy get on Dr. Phil?

But curiosity got the best of Tom, and he exited the book and began to surf the net, seeing if there were any online games about fifteenth century France, which Joan did have an interest in. He was flipping through Google pages when there was a knock at his door.

Tom’s first thought was the gun on his nightstand. As a Homicide cop, Tom had made enemies. And some of them were real doozies.

His second thought was, Maybe Joan is reading this same stupid book and is surprising me with a visit.

She’d called earlier that day, but it had been hours ago. Had she phoned from the airport, just before hopping on the red-eye?

Tom swung his legs out of bed, grabbed the terrycloth bathrobe on the floor (a gift from Joan) and stuck the Sig Saur in his pocket, first making sure there was one in the chamber. He walked out of the bedroom softly, on the balls of his feet, and traversed the short hallway to his apartment door. After an altercation with a very bad and very powerful man several years ago, Tom had improved his home security. The door was bulletproof, with a reinforced security bar. It was the same setup he’d installed at Joan’s house, and nothing short of a charging rhino could get through it.

Tom took a peek through the peephole, and saw two men in dark suits standing in the hallway. Caucasian, thirties, blank expressions. He noted how their jackets bulged, indicating they were carrying.

He palmed his Sig and said, “Yeah?”

The man on the right said, “FBI.”

They both held up badges and ID cards. Tom had seen a few in his day, and they looked legitimate enough. But you could buy anything online these days.

“What do you want?”

“It’s about your partner. Roy Lewis.”

Tom hadn’t expected that.

“What about him?”

“We believe he’s in trouble, Detective Mankowski. Can we come in?”

Tom didn’t like it. It was 2am, a highly abnormal time for the Feebies to drop in. But they both shared the classic, bored expression of government drones, and Roy was like a brother to Tom. Keeping his gun at his side, he went through the complicated process of unlatching the door and letting them in.

“The gun is hardly necessary, Detective,” said the same one, eying Tom’s piece.

“I’m a nervous type.”

They didn’t reply. Tom stepped aside and allowed them into his apartment. He noticed two things immediately.

First was their footwear. Rather than the expected Florsheims or equivalent, these men had heavy boots on, with thick rubber soles, suitable for combat. The second was their scent. It was odd, sort of a musk combined with something medicinal. Nothing that came from a bottle, and unlike any body odor Tom had ever smelled. Neither offensive or appealing, but certainly unusual.

He followed the men into the living room, where they turned to face him. No one made any move to sit on the sofa or easy chair, and Tom didn’t offer them any of the cold coffee still in the pot on the kitchen counter. He waited for them to speak first, an old cop trick. After a few seconds of silence, they did.

“We understand you and Detective Lewis were invited to an unusual gathering last weekend.”

Tom remembered the invitation, which had arrived via FedEx at work.

“Some sort of gameshow thing,” Tom said. “Win a million dollars or something like that.”

“Did you discuss it with your partner?”

Tom hadn’t. At least, not in depth. He and Roy had each gotten identical invitations, but they’d been working a gang hit, interrogating seven members of the Latin Kings over a period of four days, and he’d forgotten about the FedEx ten seconds after it arrived. After making the arrest, Roy had taken leave, mentioning he might check the invite out.

As far as Tom could recall, it was for some stupid reality show contest. Tom didn’t need the money, and he certainly didn’t want the fame. He preferred to keep to himself. One of the things he hated most about Joan’s work was the parties he was forced to attend when he visited her. All those Hollywood phonies, each trying to shine brighter than the next. Joan never acted that way, but it seemed almost every single one of her friends did.

“We spoke about it for less than a minute. Roy wondered if it was a scam. I had no interest. Didn’t even read the whole thing.”

“Do you have the invitation here?”

Tom had it on the desk in his bedroom, but something made him withhold that info.

“Not sure where it is.”

“Can you find it?”

“Why?”

The Feebies exchanged a glance, then focused back on Tom. “Because it’s evidence in a possible homicide investigation.”

Tom gripped the butt of his Sig tighter. “What are you saying?”

“We have reason to believe that Roy Lewis, your partner, has been murdered.”

It had been a long time since anyone had punched Tom in the face.

This was a whole lot worse.

Cleveland , Ohio

Deb

Deb Dieter stared at the ringing phone.

Her mouth was dry, and she could feel her heart fluttering in her chest like a hummingbird was trapped in her ribcage. She began reaching for her husband to grip his arm, and then hesitated. Her walking legs—made of carbon and fitted with a microprocessor—were harder to get on than her other prosthetics, and she was torn between the need to be comforted by Mal and the need to get dressed and flee.

Flee from what? The phone? The door?

Is this what my life has come to? Letting fear dictate my every move?

Deb forced herself to look at the phone. She flinched when it rang again.

Just answer it.

Do it.

Now.

But Deb couldn’t do it. She couldn’t even reach for it. She’d run marathons, fought mountain lions, and survived the Rushmore Inn. She’d even been taking a karate course, and had just advanced to 3^rd Mon Kyu; Purple Belt with Red Stripe. But she couldn’t get herself to answer a telephone.

Mal seemed equally paralyzed. In many ways, his ordeal had been even worse than hers. On the rare nights she was able to fall asleep, Mal often woke her up, in the throes of a night terror, whimpering in a way that never failed to raise the hair on her arms.

The phone rang again.

And again.

Then the answering machine picked up.

“You’ve reached the Dieters, please leave a message.”

“It’s the FBI. Open the door.”

Deb managed to look over at Mal, whose expression was somewhere between terrified and confused.

“This is about West Virginia.”

The Rushmore. Most of those responsible for the atrocities committed there had died.

But there was one man, who was currently in prison.

Could he have escaped?

Deb couldn’t imagine anything worse. Her mind went into overdrive, conjuring scenarios so fast they became one big blur in her head. He got out… he’s coming for her and Mal… he’s been seen in the vicinity… he’s…

He’s the one on the phone right now, impersonating the FBI.

More pounding on the door. Deb didn’t know what to do. She felt glued to the bed. Mal was shaking so badly he wouldn’t be able to hit anything with the gun he held.

“This is extremely important,” said the voice on the answering machine. “open the door. We know you’re in there. We can see you.”

Deb jerked her head from left to right, searching the bedroom, not understanding how someone could be watching her. There was no one there, nothing at all but—

The window.

The window, over the headboard of the bed.

Mal and Deb looked up, at the small, rectangular window directly above them. The venetian blinds were closed, but there were gaps and cracks. And they were on the first floor.

Someone could be standing right there.

“Open the blinds,” the voice said. “I’m holding up my badge.”

But what if he wasn’t holding a badge? What if it was the escaped psycho, and he was holding a brick, or a crowbar, or a—

Someone rapped lightly on the window.

Deb screamed.

A flashlight appeared behind the blinds.

“Put down the gun, Mr. Dieter. We’re not going to harm you or your wife.”

Sweat had broken out over Mal’s forehead, dripping down the sides of his face. He stared at his wife, and she sensed him fighting to be brave. Gun still in his hand, Mal slowly reached for the cord to the blinds—

—and yanked them open.

Standing there was a man. Not the psycho they remembered. But a tall man in a suit, holding a cell phone in one hand, the flashlight in the other, pointing at his own face.

“I’m going to take out my badge,” he said, and his words on the machine weren’t quite synced to his lips, due to the satellite delay. “We’re here to help you.”

Deb watched, transfixed, as he slowly reached into his pocket and took out an official-looking FBI badge and ID.

Trembling, she reached for the phone and picked it up.

“Help us wi…wi… with what?” she managed, teeth chattering.

The man smiled, but it was hollow and emotionless.

“Open the door and let us in. And we’ll tell you.”

Grand Haven, Michigan

Sara

“What do you want?” she said into the phone, her voice so soft she could barely hear it.

“It’s the FBI. We’re here to help you get your son back.”

Sara blinked, then shook the cobwebs from her head. The fear she’d been feeling was replaced with something else. Something she hadn’t experienced in so long she’d forgotten what it felt like.

Hope.

“Jack?” she croaked.

“Yes, Jack. Open the door, and we can talk about it.”

“I… uh… gimme a minute.”

The fear came back, and her mind twisted in two. To have her child again would be a miracle. It would, quite literally, save her life.

But there was also a chance this was a trick. Sara knew there were bad people in the world. She’d had to endure some of the worst that humanity had to offer. This call could be connected to all the bad things from her past. Or it could be some new predator, looking for an opportunity.

As she considered her options, Sara quickly changed out of her soiled sweatpants, tossing them into the shower and shimmying into some jeans. Then she went into her kitchenette, seeking the gun. She found it on the floor, next to an old pizza box, and peeked through the curtains at the entrance to her trailer.

Two men in suits. They stared right at Sara, as if they’d anticipated her looking at them. Both held gold badges. Sara wondered if the shields were real or not, then realized it didn’t matter. They could kick in her flimsy trailer door with less energy than it took to sneeze. If these men wanted to get in, they easily could. But so far, they’d opted for the polite approach.

So maybe they were FBI and telling the truth. Or maybe they’d try to kill her. In either case, there wasn’t anything she could do to stop them. The gun she held only had one bullet in it. Sara hadn’t ever expected to use it for self-defense.

She placed her hand on the front door knob, feeling as if she were inviting trouble inside. But the reality was, no matter what they could do to her, it couldn’t be worse than what had already been done.

Sara unlocked it and opened the door.

“Can we come in?”

Sara nodded, stepping aside. She gestured to her cheap dinette set, one of the chairs wobbly. The cool, fresh air from outside made her realize how sour the smell was in her trailer, and she caught an acrid stench similar to spoiled milk. The men came in and stood there, seemingly oblivious to the mess around them. And a mess it was. Dishes piled high in the sink. Fast food wrappers strewn about. A garbage can filled to overflowing. A single strip of fly paper hanging from the overhead light, speckled with dozens of the dead.

But Sara didn’t care what they thought of the mess, or if they judged her. She just wanted to know if they were speaking the truth about Jack.

Neither man made a move to sit down. They were taller than they seemed to be when standing outside. Beefier, too. More like pro wrestlers than FBI guys.

“So, you’re in,” she forced herself to talk slowly, deliberately. “What do you want?”

“We know what happened on Rock Island.”

Sara may have flinched at that, but she still had enough liquor in her system to mask her reaction. Rock Island—which she thought of as Plincer’s Island—was the cause for her current situation.

“You went through a lot,” he continued. His eyes, and expression were blank. “But you survived. It must have been quite an ordeal.”

Sara wasn’t going to get into a conversation about the past, especially about what happened on that island. “What about Jack?”

“The government has a proposition for you. We want to help.”

The sneer formed on her lips before she could stop it. “The government? They’re the ones who took my baby.”

The agent continued. So far his partner hadn’t spoken. “Child Protective Services took Jack. You were caught doing sixty miles an hour in a thirty mile zone, and he wasn’t in a car seat.”

“I… I’d left the car seat in the house.”

“You blew a one point eight.”

Sara considered responding, but the fight had long been beaten out of her.

Yes, she was a drunk. After Plincer’s Island, alcohol was the only thing that drowned out the nightmares. She came away from it scared and broke, and the DUI had been the final nail in her coffin of failure. Sara had to sell the house to pay for her legal fees, and still spent six months in jail for wreckless endangerment. When she got out, and was unable to get Jack back from the foster home the state had stuck him in. She was a single parent with a criminal record, no means of employment, and many—including the judge—were dubious of her role in the Rock Island Massacre. Without money for a good lawyer, Sara went back to drinking, winding up in this shit hole trailer park, trying to find the guts to eat that single bullet.

“How can you help?” she whispered.

“There’s an experimental program, going on this weekend. If you volunteer for it, you’ll be given one million dollars, and we’ll work with CPS to get your son back.”

Sara snorted. “A million bucks, and Jack? This is a joke, right?”

“It’s for real, Sara.” He reached into his jacket, took out some folded papers. “The details are in here.”

“What’s the program? Some sort of rehab?” As she said it Sara found herself looking around the kitchenette for any alcohol that might be left over.

The silent one finally spoke. “It’s about fear.”

Sara stared at him, and his smile was chilling.

“Fear?”

The other one continued. “You understand fear better than most people. The government wants to study how you react to fear.”

“Why?”

“Understanding fear can lead to controlling it. Certainly you can see the advantages to that.”

Sara’s brow crinkled. “So this is a fear study? Do they hook me up to some machine, then make me watch scary movies?”

The quiet one let out a chuckle. “Oh, it’s a bit more complicated than that…”

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Frank

“You’re not the Secret Service,” Dr. Frank Belgium said, scrutinizing the proffered badges that quite distinctly spelled out FBI.

“Our friends in the Secret Service told us where to find you,” said the agent on the right. His breath smelled medicinal. “We’re all Feds, so does it really matter?”

“Yes yes yes, in fact it does.”

Belgium inadvertently flashed back to the last time the Secret Service came calling, which is how he wound up at Samhain. Two men in black suits, with the proposition of a lifetime.

“We have a proposition for you,” the same agent said.

“No, thank you. I’m quite done done done with government work. Have a good night.”

Belgium moved to close the door, but the Fed stuck his foot in it.

“We’re well aware of your role in Project Samhain, Doctor. And how it turned out.”

Belgium again thought back to how that particular part of his life came to a close. About the evil loose in the world, which was partly his fault. He braced himself for the bad news.

Instead, he was surprised by bad news of a completely different kind.

“Instead of being a researcher, your government would like you to volunteer to be a test subject,” the agent said. “On a topic you know intimately well.”

“Molecular biology?”

“Fear,” said the other one.

Belgium wasn’t sure, but when the man spoke he flashed teeth that looked…

Well, they looked pointy.

“You’re invited to spend the weekend taking part in a unique experiment. You’ll be closely monitored to see how you react to fear. As you might guess, you have more experience in this area than most.”

That’s the understatement of the century, Belgium thought.

“For one day of your time, you’ll be given one million dollars. Plus your old job back at Biologen.”

Belgium raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

He’d been justifiably fired from Biologen years ago, due to negligence. Since then, they’d merged with the pharmaceutical company DruTech and had become the premiere biotech firm in the world.

“A million, and a job as head of the molecular biology department.”

Head of the department? That meant pure research, the thing in life Frank loved more than anything else.

He allowed himself a few seconds of fantasy. His own lab. Access to the best equipment. The most competent staff in the world. And no more grading ridiculous papers about plants’ reactions to household chemicals.

Then reality kicked in again, reinforced with some well-earned skepticism.

“So this has nothing to do do do with Samhain?”

“No.”

“Have you,” he chose his words carefully, “spoken with anyone else?”

“Several people. But no one you know.”

Which meant his friends from Samhain, Sun and Andy, hadn’t been approached.

But working for the government again? Could he possibly trust that?

The answer came swiftly and with finality.

Absolutely fucking not.

“It’s a tempting offer, gentlemen, but but but I’m going to decline.”

The lead agent stared deep into Belgium, his eyes emotionless. “If you don’t accept this offer, you’ll be executed for treason.”

“Treason?” Belgium squeaked. “I’ve never breathed a word of what happened, to anyone.”

“You know exactly what you did,” the agent said. “You know what you’re responsible for.”

The Fed spoke the truth. And Belgium had waited years for the evil he’d unleashed upon the world to appear again. He spent hours every week monitoring the world news, looking for evidence.

But so far, the evil had remained dormant. Belgium had even begun to hope it had disappeared completely.

“Your choice is to submit to the experiment and get a large cash settlement, along with your dream job. Or be taken to a secret prison and executed without a trial. And that threat extends to your associates.”

“Andrew and Sunshine Dennison,” the other said, giving Belgium another quick glimpse of his sharp teeth.

“I understand they’re expecting a child. Do you want to be responsible for destroying their family?”

Belgium did not want them to die. Nor did he want to die. Death was one of many, many things Frank feared.

“Then apparently I don’t don’t don’t have a choice. Where is this experiment supposed to take place?”

“Have you heard of Butler House?”

Belgium had. And as the blood drained from his face, he seriously wondered if being executed for treason was the better option.

Chicago, Illinois

Tom

“You think my partner was murdered, and it is somehow connected with this game show thing?”

The Feebies looked at each other.

“We’ve been investigating a man named Dr. Emil Forenzi. He may be involved in the disappearance of over a dozen ex-military personnel. From what we’ve been able to find out, he’s doing some sort of scientific research on the physical characteristics of fear.”

“He’s the one who sent the invitations?”

“We believe so.”

“And you think he may have killed Roy?”

“We’re not sure.”

“You guys don’t know much, do you?”

“Detective Mankowski, we believe Dr. Forenzi may in fact be funded by the US military. So certain avenues have been closed to us.”

Tom could understand that. The army, much like the government, tended to keep hush-hush about things above your pay grade. “Do you have any actual evidence?”

“Just circumstantial. We’ve been trying to get a man on the inside of Forenzi’s operation, but security is tight. However, we do know he has been inviting people to participate in his experiments. People who have undergone a particularly frightening experiences. We’ve done a background check on you and your partner, and you both certainly qualify.”

No shit, Tom thought.

“We’d really like to know what’s going on, Detective.”

“And you want me to find out.”

“We’ve gotten permission from your boss, Captain Bains, to work with you on this.”

That seemed odd to Tom, as Bains didn’t like working with the Feebies. And justifiably so. They were territorial, smug, and often looked down on city cops. But Bains also had an almost paternal sense of responsibility toward his men. If Roy was missing, the captain would want him found.

“And you can’t do this yourselves because…?” Tom asked.

“We weren’t invited. You were. You could poke around, talk to Forenzi, try to get some evidence. We’ve tried to interview him, but he lawyered up. And we’ve found obtaining a warrant to be challenging. He apparently has friends in high places.”

“Where is Forenzi?”

They exchanged another glance. “He’s set up his laboratory in the Butler House.”

“The Butler House?”

“You’ve heard of it?”

Next to the house made famous in the Amityville Horror, Butler House was probably the most famous paranormal site in America. Tom even remembered streaming a low budget Netflix movie about it. Located in South Carolina, an insane doctor—the brother of a plantation owner—built a laboratory-slash-dungeon underneath the estate, where he performed horrible experiments on the slaves they owned. Tom watched ten minutes before turning it off. Even though it was poorly acted, and the special effects were shoddy, the ghosts in the movie were hideously deformed and reminded Tom of a real night he spent in the real basement of a real mansion, and he didn’t need to be reminded of that.

“Supposed to be haunted,” Tom said.

“Forenzi is apparently convinced it actually is haunted. And he believes the fear of the supernatural induces the purest terror response in his volunteers.”

“Have you talked to any of these volunteers?”

“No. We’ve tried to track down those we know of, but they’ve… disappeared.”

Tom almost laughed at that. Almost. It was ridiculous enough to be the punchline for a campfire ghost story. But neither Feebie looked amused.

“How many people are we talking about here?” he asked.

“Two or three dozen.”

“Including the missing military men?”

“In addition to them.”

“So you’re saying there have been… how many?… maybe fifty people who have disappeared in Butler House since Forenzi moved in?”

“That number might be low.”

“And no one has done anything?”

“We’re trying to do something, Detective. Which is why we’re at your apartment at three in the morning.”

Tom rubbed his eyes. “I need to think about this. Do you have a number I can reach you at?”

One of the agents produced a card and held it out.

“We really would like to see that invitation,” he said, pinching the card so Tom couldn’t take it.

“When I find it, I’ll show it to you.”

The Fed released the card. Special Agent John Smith. Go figure.

“We’ve heard that Forenzi is conducting another experiment this weekend. Our informant says guests are being picked right now.”

“Who is this informant?”

Neither agent answered. Obviously the Bureau had their need-to-know info just like the military did.

“Goodnight, gentlemen,” Tom said. “You can find your way out.”

They left without so much as a nod. As soon as the door closed, Tom went to his cell phone and called Roy.

It went straight to voice mail.

“Roy, it’s Tom. Call me back as soon as you get this.”

It was too early in the morning to call Gladys, Roy’s ex-wife, so instead Tom went into the bedroom and found the FedExed invitation. He snapped on a pair of vinyl gloves he kept in his drawer, and pulled the invite out of the blue and orange cardboard mailer. It was a standard 8.5” x 11” sheet of paper, off white and a heavy stock. The writing on it appeared to be calligraphy.

Survive the night in a haunted house and receive $1,000,000. Call 843-555-2918 to confirm.

Invitation 3345

Tom turned the paper over, finding nothing, then looked for a nonexistent water mark. Next, he sniffed it, and it smelled like paper. Finally he took out a magnifying glass and studied the script. It was inkjet, not handwritten.

It said nothing about this being a gameshow or a reality show, but those were the possibilities he and Roy had brought up during the fifteen seconds they’d discussed it. But this seemed more likely to be a joke, hoax, or scam.

And yet the Feebies were extremely interested in this invitation, and they didn’t think this was a put on.

Tom switched on his computer monitor, saw he was still on the Skype program he used to talk to Joan. She was offline. He frowned, then Googled Dr. Emil Forenzi, spelling it like it sounded.

He found him on the Linkedin social network. Born in Brazil fifty-six years ago, his father Italian and mother a native. Moved to the US when he was a child. Full scholarship to Brown. Doctorate at MIT. Then he went to work for the DoD, and apparently still did. Specialties included a bunch of technical and science skills that Tom had to scroll down to read completely.

So why does a genius scientist believe in something as ridiculous as the supernatural?

Tom squelched the thought. If he described some of the very real things that had happened to him, the majority of the world would think they were ridiculous as well. Trying to keep his mind open, he searched for Butler House on Google and found a website dedicated to it.

Tom settled back in his desk chair and began to read.

Building History

Butler House was built in 1837 by wealthy landowner Jebediah James Butler on a cotton plantation in Solidarity, South Carolina, fifty miles outside of Charleston. Boasting more than one hundred and fifty rooms in the neoclassical antebellum style, it was home to Jebediah, his wife Annabelle, and his younger brother, Colton, until their deaths in 1851.

Construction began in 1835 and faced many setbacks, including a severe storm, a fire, and the deaths of three workers. One died when a pallet of bricks crushed him. Another was scalded to death by hot tar. A third fell into the concrete foundation when it was being poured, and drown there. A generally accepted rumor is his body wasn’t discovered until the concrete had cured, and it was unable to be removed, so Butler indicated more concrete be poured on top of him.

Many point to this lack of a proper burial as the beginning of the rumors that the property was haunted. Others contend that the source of the problems was the land itself. In the late 1700s it was a thriving village of Cusabo Native Americans numbering over two hundred. The village was burned, its people massacred, by white settlers desiring the fertile land.

During the lengthy and troublesome construction, Annabelle had been heard to say, “Maybe the Lord doesn’t want us building this house.”

The slow completion time is also attributed to the architectural demands Butler made. He hired three different architects, each to design a different part of the building, so no one but Butler knew the exact layout. This was especially important because the manor was outfitted with many secret rooms and passageways, false walls, staircases that lead nowhere, a labyrinthine basement with several kilometers worth of tunnels, and a torture chamber.

Slavery

At its peak in 1841, the plantation boasted dozens of slaves, the majority working several hundred acres of cotton and tobacco. Butler was known to openly boast that he was breeding his own workforce, and many of the slaves born on the property were fathered by Butler or his brother. On several recorded occasions, if a child born on the property was too light skinned, Butler would feed it alive to the passel of hogs he kept on the property.

Butler soon became one of the largest slave buyers in the South, which caused one of his contemporaries to remark, “[Butler] has purchased so damned many he could farm the entire state.” But at any given time, Butler never seemed to have more than fifty slaves working for him, even though records have shown he had bought more than four hundred.

Known to be unusually cruel masters, the Butler brothers seemed to have delighted in inflicting punishment on their slaves, for slights real or imagined. They made full use of the house’s torture chamber, where slaves were skinned, boiled, crucified, scourged, whipped, mutilated, and burned.

Colton Butler, a self-professed physician who demanded to be addressed as “Doctor” even though he held no known medical degree, conducted many surgical experiments on slaves, without anesthesia, with the apparent goal of joining them together.

“I believe I have the ability and necessary determination,” Butler wrote, “to fuse the parts of two Negroes together into a single being. Consider a slave with four strong arms, which would double his work output, or with six breasts to suckle young…”

Rebellion

The Butlers hired ten armed men to guard them and their property, and they were known to be as cruel as their employers. Daily beatings, corporal punishments, and public executions (even though the killing of slaves was against the slave code) were commonplace. A one-eyed man named Jonathan “Blackjack” Reedy, worked as taskmaster in the fields, and once said, “Spilled blood is good for the soil, makes the cotton stronger.”

On October 31, 1847, near the end of the annual cotton harvest, Blackjack was whipping a young boy whose only infraction was said to have been stopping for a moment to wipe the sweat from his brow. This appeared to have been the final straw for the mistreated slaves, and they revolted, beating Blackjack so severely the only way the authorities could identify his corpse was by his black leather eyepatch.

The rebellion spread throughout the fields, the guards either being surprised or running out of ammunition, and after the last was killed the angry slaves converged on Butler House.

Jebediah Butler, and his wife Annabelle, were hung naked by their ankles from the rafters in Butler House’s great room and beaten to death with whips and scourges. Colton was chased into the bowels of the basement, and dragged to the torture chamber where he was placed upon the rack and stretched until his arms and legs were broken in several places each. Then he was set ablaze.

The majority of the slaves escaped to nearby states, some making their way to the North and freedom.

Aftermath

The deaths of the Butlers was headline news for weeks after the incident, and bounties were put on the runaway slaves’ heads. But there weren’t many takers. There were rumors of a “slave curse” which claimed any who tried to capture the Butler slaves would meet the same fate as the Butler family.

The house, and plantation, went unoccupied for five years, until a man claiming to be a distant cousin of the Butlers, Sturgis Butler, petitioned the court for ownership and moved in during the summer of 1852.

Sturgis tried, unsuccessfully, to hire workers to fix up the house, which had fallen into disrepair and still bore the damage incurred during the rebellion. But laborers always quit in terror after a few days, claiming to have witnessed strange ghostly figures, or disembodied screams.

Sturgis resorted to repairing the house on his own, but he didn’t try to recapture the farm, and the land soon became a dense marsh.

Though Sturgis never married, he entertained a wide variety of women at Butler House, many of them prostitutes. At least a dozen were never heard of again.

Civil War Years

When the War Between the States broke out in 1861, Butler House was commandeered by the Confederate Army as a garrison. Between 1861 and 1865, at least six soldiers committed suicide on the grounds, and sixteen more were remanded to a local insane asylum, ranting about supernatural phenomenon. While under psychiatric care, four killed themselves, eight died of unexplained causes, and one man plucked out his own eyes with a fork.

Sturgis, exempt from the draft because he worked as a druggist, remained at the house during its occupation by troops, though he kept to himself in a closed off wing of the basement. Rumors abounded of him being “in league with the devil” and a proponent of “black magick.” Milledge Luke Bonham, governor of South Carolina and Brigadier General in the army, said of Sturgis, “There is something dark and twisted about that man. He is certainly no Christian.”

Reconstruction Years

During the four decades after the war ended, little was heard from Sturgis Butler. Prostitutes from the county continued to disappear, and the locals paid little mind to it. But in in 1902, Mia Lockwood, the only child of Southern poultry magnate Earl Lockwood, vanished the night before her debutante ball in Charleston.

Gossip and rumor led to the formation of a posse/lynch mob who raided the Butler House on May 1, the pagan holiday known as Walpurgis Night. Upon breaking into the house, the group discovered Sturgis presiding over a Black Mass replete with occult paraphernalia including black candles, severed animal heads, sacrilegious objects, and a seventeenth century binding of the Compendium Maleficarum, a notorious text on witches. Sturgis had hung a naked and violated Mia upside-down on a cross, and was lapping at the blood streaming from her slashed throat when the mob arrived.

Sturgis was immediately dragged outside, lashed to a black oak tree, and set ablaze. He allegedly laughed as he burned.

Inspection of the property over the succeeding weeks discovered three mass graves, some going back over seventy years (determined to be the bones of slaves) and some more recent (the corpses of missing prostitutes) making Sturgis one of America’s first, and most prolific, serial killers.

1910-1945

Butler House remained unoccupied for a few years after Sturgis Butler’s death, until the county acquired it, making the mansion a home for the blind, and for invalid veterans of the First World War . At the height of its use, it housed over a hundred. During its thirty-five years of operation, there were many fatal illnesses that infected patients.

1911 – Tuberculosis killed 35.

1918 – The Spanish Flu killed 63.

1920 – Diphtheria killed 9.

1924 – Botulism killed 40.

1931 – Cholera killed 5.

1940 – Measles killed 5.

In 1945, a fire broke out in the great room, and all of the 86 residents died of smoke inhalation or third degree burns. It is unknown why they were unable to escape, as the doors were all in working order.

After WWII

Butler House remained abandoned until 1956, when it was acquired by a land development company intent on tearing it down and building a housing development. The day before demolition occurred, the owner of the company, J.J. Hossenport, was struck by lightning and killed while getting into his car.

During his funeral, lightning struck and killed his widow, Myrtle Hossenport.

Their heirs, believing the property to be cursed, put it up for sale. It remained on the market and vacant for twenty-nine years, though six different realtors showed the house dozens of times.

It was finally acquired by eccentric millionaire Augustus Torble, the lone heir of a restaurant mogul, who spent over a million dollars restoring the house to its former shape. In 1985, he moved into Butler House with his young bride, Maria.

In 1992, Maria was discovered by hunters, wandering naked in the woods six miles from Butler House. She was malnourished and incoherent, scars covering eighty percent of her body.

In the hospital, she told the police a tale of captivity and severe abuse by her husband, who kept her locked in Butler House’s torture chamber and committed unspeakable acts upon her for several years. She also told of being forced to participate in the torture and murder of eleven women, whose remains were found in one of the underground tunnels.

Torble was arrested, tried, and sentenced to life in prison. Shortly after the trial, Maria committed suicide. To this day, the women Torble killed remain unidentified. Torble refused to cooperate with authorities, and it is unknown where he found them or how he lured them to the house. He remains incarcerated at the Fetzer Correctional Institution in Charleston, SC.

Current Owner

The house remained vacant until 2002, when it was purchased by Unified Systems Association, which built an electrified perimeter fence around Butler House. Since then it has been off limits to ghost hunters, thrill seekers, and the curious. Those caught trespassing on private property are promptly arrested.

Hauntings

During its 176 year history, dozens of strange happenings and unexplainable phenomenon have been linked to Butler House. Some highlights include:

1848 – A string of arsons in Charleston, including six churches that burned to the ground, were attributed to a shadowy figure with an eye patch. Several witnesses swore it was the ghost of slave driver Blackjack Reedy.

1863 – Eight Confederate soldiers staying at Butler House reported a floating ball of light that roamed the lower tunnels at night. It had the ability to go through walls and locked doors, and if it touched a person, that person died of fright.

1908 – There were seven verified attacks and sexual assaults on women in the Charleston area, by an assailant whom they claimed to be Sturgis Butler… six years after his death.

1915 – Returning WWI veterans, many of whom were victims of chlorine, phosgene, and mustard chemical weapons, claim to have been tormented by a giggling spirit in a gas mask.

1918 – During the Spanish Flu epidemic, over a dozen patients reported being assaulted, molested, and in some cases raped, by an unknown entity. The spirit supposedly smelled like burned flesh, and paralyzed its victims so they couldn’t move or cry out while the attacks were taking place.

1958 – Since the deaths of J.J. and Myrtle Hossenport, descendants have suffered a streak of bad luck many attribute to supernatural phenomenon. Six car accidents, two fires, a drowning, a stroke, and a dog attack, have killed sixteen Hossenport family members. The last remaining Hossenport in the lineage, Mary Kate, was murdered by serial killer Charles Kork in 1993.

1965 – Reknowned psychic medium Mdme. Francesca Sillero gathered with a group of wealthy benefactors at Butler House to hold a séance on Halloween night. During the proceedings, she claimed to have channeled the spirit of Colton Butler. While Butler’s spirit was inside her, he allegedly forced her to pluck out both of her eyes and chew off her tongue.

1982 – A group of Charleston teenagers broke into Butler House to have a late-night party. Shortly after arriving, one of teen’s gums began to bleed for no explainable reason. By the time her friends got her to the hospital, every one of her teeth had fallen out. No medical explanation has ever been given.

1998 – A TV crew from the paranormal investigation show Ghost Smashers spent Halloween night in Butler House. Unconfirmed reports indicate a tragedy occurred. No one knows what happened, but the host, Richard Reiser, immediately retired from television without the program ever airing.

Tom clicked on the PHOTOS section of the website. The first picture looked a lot like the White House, but no columns and a darker color. The second was of three people, the Butler brothers and Annabelle.

Jebediah Butler was a bespectacled man with white hair and a Van Dyke beard. He looked a lot like a fatter Col. Sanders, minus the mirth. His wife was also plump, and either there was a spot on the photo or her left eye was severely crossed. Colton was the tallest, and rail thin. He leaned on his cane, hunched over as if his back was hurting him, and had one of those walrus mustaches with the ends curled up and waxed.

The next photo looked like a hole in the dirt filled with rocks, and Tom had to read the inscription to understand what he was seeing.

Over four thousand human bones found buried on the property.

Creeped out, he made the mistake of clicking on the next photo, which was a shirtless African American man who had so many scars on his body he no longer looked human. As Tom hurried to hit the ESC button, something in the image stopped him.

Something hanging on the man’s mangled shoulder.

A third arm.

It was small, withered, hanging over his chest like a wrinkled leather belt. But there were clearly five fingers on the end of it, and they were—

Holy shit. The fingers are holding a tin drinking cup .

Tom zoomed in, trying to spot if the photo had been altered, but it looked real enough.

What the hell was wrong with some people? Assuming even some of the facts on the website were true, what could make someone treat his fellow man like that?

Tom went to the next picture, partly out of morbid curiosity, partly because he wanted to see the Butlers get what was coming to them. He was rewarded by a photo that looked like two bloody, skinned deer carcasses.

Wrong again. The caption read The bodies of Jebediah and Annabelle Butler. They’d had every inch of skin on their body whipped off.

Thankfully, there were no pictures of the tortured Colton. But there was a portrait of Sturgis Butler, and Tom was shocked at how much he looked like Vlad the Impaler. Same dark, bulging eyes. Same pointy black beard. Tom found himself staring into those eyes, revulsion wiggling in his stomach.

Next came a picture of the house after the fire in ‘45. The structure remained intact, but there was telltale soot and fire damage surrounding the windows and front doors. Tom was going to move onto the next page, but something in the photo caught his eye.

He made the jpg the size of his monitor. In one of the blackened windows was a speck of white.

Tom zoomed in further.

The white speck looked like the ghostly face of a man screaming.

There was a sound and movement to Tom’s right, and he immediately glanced over his shoulder, adrenaline kicking in, and watched as his bedroom door—

—closed by itself.

As his fight-or-flight response kicked in, Tom remembered his window was open a crack. The draft sometimes blew the door open and closed; something that happened often enough that Tom actually looked it up and discovered it had to do with air pressure in the room.

Still, it was disconcerting after reading the history of Butler House. Tom’s mouth was dry. His heart was doing a fox trot. And he both felt, and saw, all the tiny hairs on the backs of his hands stick straight up.

He was afraid.

And the Feebies were right. Tom knew, more than most, what it was like to be afraid.

He didn’t like it. Not one bit.

Tom stared at the phone, wanting to call Joan. Hearing her voice would reassure him, calm him down.

Instead he visited YouTube and played an upbeat rock performance by Bob Walkenhorst.

He also turned on the bedroom light.

In the bright room, with the music playing, Tom felt less frightened.

But he couldn’t relax enough to sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw that poor, scarred, three-armed slave. And thought of his partner, Roy.

Mililani, Hawaii

Fran

Fran stood in the safe room with her family, watching the porch monitor. The two men who stood at their front door looked around when Josh hit the intercom button and spoke.

“Who are you and what do you want?”

“Mr. VanCamp?” They still couldn’t find the camera. “We’re from the FBI. We want to talk to you and your wife.”

Josh glanced at her, and Fran gave her head a small shake.

“We’re not interested,” Josh answered. “Go away.”

“It’s an opportunity for you to each earn a million dollars.”

“Two million bucks?” Duncan said. “Mom, that’s a crapload of money.”

“And probably a crapload of trouble,” Josh added. “Hon?”

“No way,” Fran said.

“If you’d let us in,” the man on the porch continued, “we could explain in detail. It will only require a day of your time. It’s a government-sponsored experiment.”

Josh snorted. Fran saw the incredulity in his eyes. She felt exactly the same way. She’d jump off a cliff onto a bed of nails before trusting the government.

“You have ten seconds to get off of our property,” she said into the intercom. “Or we’re going to shoot you.”

One of the men on the monitor reached into his pocket, and produced some folded papers. “We have all the information right here.”

“Five seconds,” Josh said.

“We’ll, um, leave it here for you.”

Fran watched the man stick the papers in the door jamb, and then they left. She followed them, monitor to monitor, until they walked off the grounds.

Duncan stared over at her, his eyes wide. “Would you really have shot them, Mom?”

Fran didn’t answer. But her thoughts went back to Safe Haven. To all the friends she’d lost. To all the horror she and her family had endured.

Would she have shot them? Hell yeah.

No one will ever have a chance to harm her, or her family, again.

Not as long as Fran still had the strength to rack a shotgun and pull a trigger.

Cleveland , Ohio

Mal

“It’s just for twenty-four hours,” said the FBI agent in the doorway. “You’ll arrive, have a meal, get examined by a doctor, then be locked in the Butler House overnight, and closely monitored to study how you react to fear.”

“So they’ll be purposely trying to frighten us?” Deb asked.

Mal had tucked the gun into his bathrobe pocket, and his wife was holding his hand so hard she was cutting off his circulation.

“It’s a fear study,” the agent said. “You both have had unique experiences that make you ideal candidates.”

“And we live with those experiences, every day,” Mal said. His apprehension had been fading since they answered the door, and was slowly being replaced by anger. “You have no right to come here and make this offer.”

After all he and Deb had survived, why would they willingly expose themselves to even more horrors, real or convoluted? To even ask that of his wife made Mal’s blood pressure skyrocket, and there was no way in hell he’d ever allow—

“Can we think it over?” Deb said.

Mal stared at her, unable to hide his surprise.

“Deb?”

“I didn’t say we’ll do it, hon. But I think we should talk about it.”

Mal didn’t understand. Sure, two million dollars was a lot, but they were doing fine financially. Why would Deb even consider this?

The agent who’d done all the talking reached into his jacket and handed Deb some folded papers. Mal detected the tiniest smirk in the corner of the man’s mouth.

“The experiment begins this weekend. Good evening to you both.”

The Feds left, and his wife closed the door, locking the various latches and deadbolts.

“Debbie, you’re not serious.” He searched her pretty face. “Are you?”

“I think we should at least discuss it, before you make a decision for the both of us.”

“I don’t understand.” Which was as true a statement he’d ever made. “I thought—”

“That’s the problem, Mal,” she snapped. “You thought, but didn’t ask me.”

“Is it the money?”

“I wasn’t even thinking about the money.”

“So what’s there to discuss? We can’t sleep as it is. You want to go someplace where they’re purposely trying to terrify you?”

“It’s a fear study, Mal. Something you and I suffer from, every single day.”

“Exactly, so—”

“So maybe a doctor who studies fear could somehow teach us how to deal with ours.”

Mal was about to object, but caught himself. They’d both had psychiatric treatment since the Rushmore Inn. Hypnotherapy. Exposure Therapy. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Interpersonal. Group. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. And a pharmacy’s worth of drugs, from sleep agents to SSRIs to beta-blockers to anti-psychotics.

Nothing seemed to work. In fact, some of the treatments worsened their condition.

“You remember exposure therapy,” Mal said.

“Of course.”

They’d been subjected to shocking images of mutilations and congenital malformations in order to desensitize them. Deb had freaked out during a session, crying so uncontrollably they’d had to quit, and later that night Mal had gone to the ER, unable to stop hyperventilating, convinced he was having a heart attack.

“This seems even worse, Deb. They’re not just going to show us pictures. They’re going to try to scare us.”

“We’ll get through it,” Deb said, reaching for him again. “Just like we got through the Rushmore. But maybe we’ll learn something this time.”

Mal chewed his lower lip. The worst part about fear wasn’t the dread, it was the helplessness. The FBI agents said they’d be able to bring any items they wanted to with them for the weekend, including weapons. But the gun in Mal’s robe didn’t make him feel any safer. Quite the opposite. The very fact he owned a gun was a constant reminder of what he was so afraid of.

“I don’t know, Deb…”

“Can we discuss it, at least?” She moved a step closer to him, the hydraulic cylinders in her prosthetics whirring softly.

Mal didn’t want to discuss it. He wanted to run away, someplace where it never got dark. Where nightmares didn’t exist, both the ones in his head and the real ones.

But the longing in his wife’s eyes made his heart hurt.

“Of course, Deb. If this is something you want.”

“It is.”

Deb moved in for the hug, and he reluctantly embraced her, a thought bouncing through his mind and forcing out all others.

Be careful what you wish for, because it may come true.

Solidarity, South Carolina

Forenzi

Dr. Emil Forenzi could barely hear the phone ring above all the screaming.

“It’s okay,” Forenzi told his patient, giving him an affectionate pat on the cheek. “It’s all going to be okay.”

The screaming didn’t abate. Forenzi gave him a dose of traumesterone and the noise went down to a hoarse wheeze.

Forenzi answered the phone, located on the wall next to the EKG machine.

“I’m with a patient,” he said into the receiver. Which was unnecessary, because he was always with a patient. Even at ungodly hours like this. Who could sleep when there was so much to do?

“We have a head count for this weekend.”

“Go on.”

“Three confirmed.”

“And the others?”

“Still deciding.”

Forenzi frowned. He’d been hoping for better results.

“Which three?”

“Sara Randhurst. Moni Draper. Frank Belgium.”

Forenzi rubbed the stubble on his chin, and his eyes drifted across his laboratory. Besides his patient, and the various pieces of equipment, there was a large, glass apparatus on a stainless steel table, which looked like something out of a mad scientist movie. It was currently distilling a batch of Serum 3.

That serum, Forenzi knew, was going to win him a Nobel Prize.

Some believed that most of humanity’s conflicts, be it person-to-person or country-to-country, were based upon one possessing something the other one wanted. Land. Oil. Water. Food. Religious and political differences were used as excuses to dehumanize the enemy and grab their resources.

But Forenzi knew that this greed was bolstered by another, even more base and powerful emotion.

Fear.

Mankind reeked of fear.

This fear led to distrust, and ultimately to hate.

Being able to conquer fear meant a fresh start for the world.

“Let me know if the situation changes,” he said, then hung up.

Of the three who signed on, Dr. Belgium interested him most. A molecular biologist, he would recognize what Forenzi was doing here. It would be refreshing to talk to someone who could grasp the magnitude of this invention. Who would understand it.

He turned back to his patient, whose eyelids had drooped in sleep. Forenzi yawned sympathetically.

“You’re exhausted, my friend. So am I. We can continue the therapy tomorrow. Sleep well.”

Forenzi left the lab, walking into a hallway that looked more like a tunnel in a coal mine than the basement of a mansion. The floors were crumbling concrete, the walls lined with stacked railroad ties. There were wood ceiling braces every five meters, and Forenzi wouldn’t have doubted the bare 60w bulbs hanging from them were older than he was. As he passed beneath one, it buzzed and flickered.

One of the many ghosts of Butler House, demanding attention.

Forenzi paid it no mind. Instead, he took the hall to a fork, went right, and headed for the veterinary clinic. As he approached, he heard some lone trilling, and recognized it as Gunter’s.

Forenzi’s spirits dipped, and his pace quickened. He entered the clinic through the metal push door and beelined for Gunter’s habitat, which was situated to the right. It was several cubic meters in size, with a window of clear, unbreakable Plexiglas, the interior foliage meant to mimic a Columbian forest, with twisted, dead tree branches and fake plants.

The Panamanian Night Monkey watched his approach while upside down, hanging from a limb. Gunter was large for an A. zolalis, nearly three pounds in weight. His bushy brown fur was mottled with blood, and his enormous red eyes stared at Forenzi dispassionately.

“Gunter… Gunter… what have you done?”

Of course, Forenzi already had the answer to that. Gunter’s two cagemates, capuchins named Laurel and Hardy, were dead on the fake grass in the habitat. They’d been dismembered and eviscerated, their insides strewn across the bathing pond and staining the water pink.

“You just can’t play well with others, can you?” Forenzi shook his head and tsked.

Gunter stared, unmoving.

Aphobic.

Forenzi picked up the clipboard next to the habitat, recorded the event, and then flipped through the previous five months to get an accurate count.

“This makes twenty-eight,” he said. “You’re a regular little monkey serial killer.”

Gunter grunted, as if agreeing.

Forenzi left a note for the morning help to clean the cage, and order more monkeys. Serum 3, for all of its potential, still had some kinks to work out. There was undoubtedly a broad line between fearless and homicidal, but Forenzi hadn’t found it yet.

“I think we’ll lower your dosage,” Gunter said. “Maybe then you’ll be able to make friends.”

Gunter continued to stare, and Forenzi wondered how much the night monkey actually understood. Besides the expected changes to Gunter’s amygdala, the primate’s frontal lobe had also enlarged, increasing his intelligence. Forenzi wondered, half-joking, if one day Gunter would become so smart he’d solve the dosage problem himself.

Gunter dropped from his upside-down perch, startling Forenzi with the sudden movement. Without taking his big eyes off the doctor, he reached for a dismembered capuchin leg and began to gnaw on it.

“Apparently I don’t need to feed you, either,” Forenzi said.

Gunter grunted.

There was a great crash from above, and a small plume of dust drifted downward. Both Gunter and Forenzi stared at the ceiling.

Directly above them was Butler House. At this time of night, it should have been quiet.

But it rarely was.

“I wonder if monkeys have ghosts,” Forenzi mused. “Perhaps your friends Laurel and Hardy will visit you tonight, Gunter. And they probably won’t be pleased with the whole murder-dismemberment-cannibalism debacle. But then, that wouldn’t scare you, would it, Gunter? Nothing scares you at all.”

Forenzi wondered if he should mention Gunter during his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, since the animal had been essential to his research.

If so, perhaps the multiple killings should be downplayed. Or left unsaid.

“Goodnight, my friend. And don’t eat so quickly. You’ll choke.”

Forenzi left the lab, turning off the overhead florescent lights so his experiment could dine in the dark.

Chicago, Illinois

Tom

After four hours of troubled sleep, Tom reached for his cell phone next to the bed and hit redial.

It went straight to Roy’s voicemail.

Peering at the nightstand clock, he judged 8am to be late enough to call Roy’s ex-wife. Tom located the number in his address book, and she picked up on the second ring.

“Hi, Gladys. It’s Tom Mankowski.”

“Is Roy with y’all? Fool missed his visitation time with his daughter.”

Hell. Tom went into cop mode. “Does he do that often?”

“Not without calling he don’t. And he didn’t call. She was really upset, Tom. I was, too. I had plans. Tell him we’re both extremely disappointed in him. He hook up with some hoochie mama and lose track of time? Now he’s playing you to smooth things over?”

Hoochie mama? “I don’t know where he is, Gladys.”

“Really? This isn’t a game?” Glady’s voice had shed its ghetto attitude, and Tom sensed the concern.

“Apparently he’s been missing since last week.”

“A week? Oh, Jesus, Tom. I… what do we do?”

“I’m going to look for him, Gladys.”

“Thank you. Please keep me posted, okay?”

“Sure thing. And if you hear from him, please call.”

“I will. What should I tell Rhonda?”

Double hell. Rhonda just turned five. Old enough to wonder where her daddy was.

“I don’t know, Gladys.”

“You think it’s one of his old cases? Or a new one?”

“I don’t know. Did he mention going anywhere to you?”

“No. Nothing. He usually calls the day before he picks up Rhonda, which was supposed to be Wednesday. But he didn’t. His phone goes straight to voicemail.”

“Did he say anything about a haunted house? Or a reality show? Or getting some money?”

“I haven’t heard from him since he took Rhonda to a Cubs game, over two weeks ago. Do you think… do you think he might be…”

Then he heard it. A sniffle.

Gladys was crying.

“You know, Tom, that son of a bitch makes me angrier than anyone I’ve ever met. But if anything has happened to him…”

“I’ll find him, Gladys.”

“Rhonda needs her father.”

“I’ll find him. My love to Rhonda.”

Tom hung up. Listening to women cry was almost as bad as informing next of kin that someone close to them had died. And Tom had to wonder if that’s what he just did with Gladys.

He found the FedEx invitation and dialed the number, using his land line. A machine picked up, the voice synthetic. One of those text-to-speech generators that just missed sounding human. Futurists called it the uncanny valley. A sense of revulsion that people felt when they experienced something that was almost human, but not quite. It was thought of as a survival mechanism, to help people avoid those who looked or sounded strange. Tom could understand how that worked, on a genetics level, because procreating with those who had some sort of defect meant potentially defective children, and avoiding someone who was odd decreased the chance of getting whatever disease they had. At least that’s how the futurists explained it.

But listening to the voice, Tom realized it could help humans survive in another kind of way. By helping them avoid things that almost looked human, but weren’t.

Things like ghosts.

“Please say or punch in your reservation number, followed by the pound sign.”

Tom used his phone keypad.

“Hello, Tom Mankowski,” the creepy robotic voice said. “You are invited to spend the night at the haunted Butler House in Solidarity, South Carolina, where you will participate in a fear experiment. The house is located on 683 Auburn Road. You are expected to arrive on Saturday, before noon. You can bring whatever items you’d like, including weapons, religious paraphernalia, and ghost detecting equipment. If you take any prescription medication, please bring it along. The experiment will end Sunday at 4pm. Informing others about this experiment will disqualify you from your million dollar participation fee. Polygraphs will be administered to ensure compliance. Have a nice day. We’ll see you soon.”

Tom held the phone, trying to understand the weird feeling that had come over him. The instructions were straightforward and polite, but the call hadn’t left him with warm, fuzzy feelings.

Quite the opposite, he was experiencing something that only happened rarely. like when a perp ducked down an alley, and Tom had to follow. Or the second just before he had to kick in a suspect’s door.

Fear of the unexpected. Also known as dread.

He shook his head, trying to brush off the feeling. But the dread clung there like cobwebs.

Tom startled when the off-hook tone began to beep from the handset.

“If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and dial again. If you need help—”

He hung up.

Tom considered calling Joan, but the two hour time zone difference would have meant waking her up. Instead, he padded over to the shower and turned it on, hot as he could stand it. Then he stared into his bathroom mirror and began to scrape the stubble off his face. His beard, like the hair on his head, was turning prematurely gray. He also needed a haircut.

The mirror began to steam up, and Tom raised his hand to wipe it off, but stopped before his fingers touched the glass.

The fogging had revealed words, handwritten on the mirror.

I’M WATCHING YOU

THE NEXT DAY

THE NEXT DAY

Pittsburgh International Airport

Mal

Growing more and more uncomfortable as they inched their way through the security line, Mal let his wife go through the metal detector first.

She beeped, as expected, and then got into a conversation with the bored-looking TSA guard. He waved his wand over Deb. That led to her pulling off her jogging pants—which had snaps on the sides instead of seams.

Mal’s prosthetic hand always got a few raised eyebrows, but Deb’s artificial legs drew attention like a marching band down Main Street. Though Deb was always offered the option of a private search, away from gawkers, she never accepted, preferring to strip down to her shorts and show everyone on the planet her high tech artificial limbs.

Mal knew Deb did it because she didn’t want to be treated any differently than anyone else. But they did treat her differently, and Mal watched the crowd finger pointing and murmuring, some assholes actually snapping pictures.

It was made even worse by the fact that Deb was an athlete, and very fit, so standing there in her running shorts like a sexy female Robocop getting ready to pose for Playboy 2054 made him feel jealous as well as overprotective. As expected, after her scan and pat-down, Deb was immediately approached by a smiling Lothario who was better looking, a better dresser, and no doubt younger and richer than Mal was.

So I get to endure her humiliation of stripping down to her stumps, and then nurse my own humiliation because I don’t feel I’m man enough for her.

Mal was expertly in tune with his own feelings, thanks to the unrelenting therapy. Besides lacking a hand to touch his wife with, he also felt powerless to protect her. That led to feelings of inadequacy which normally didn’t reveal themselves during daylight hours. But as he watched CEO Joe chat up his wife while TSA played stupid with his mechanical hand, Mal felt himself getting angrier and angrier. When they finally let him through, he stormed over to Deb as she was re-snapping her running pants.

“Picked up an admirer, I see,” Mal said, sizing up the man. He looked fit, and could probably kick Mal’s ass all day long and not break a sweat.

“Just paying the lady a compliment,” the guy replied. He looked confident, which Mal hated. Especially because Mal remembered being that confident once.

“I’m the lady’s husband,” Mal said. “Now go run off to your board meeting.”

The guy puffed his chest out. “Or what?”

“Or I’ll beat the shit out of you, then make you lick it up.”

Doubt flashed across the man’s face. He muttered, “Asshole,” then turned and walked off.

Deb looked irritated. “Where did all that testosterone come from?”

“The guy was hitting on you, Deb.”

“He said it was really brave of me to take my jogging pants off like I did.”

Mal rolled his eyes. “He said that because you have a nice ass. Think he would have said that to some fat guy with artificial legs?”

“Can’t I be brave and have a nice ass? You know, Mal, I feel like a freak often enough. Some guy innocently flirting makes me feel normal. He wasn’t a threat to you.”

Mal wanted to turn away. But if he did, it would prove she won and he was wrong. So he forced himself to maintain eye contact. “He saw you as an easy target, Deb.”

“I’m not easy. And I’m not a target.”

Mal switched tactics. “Deb, there are… guys… who have fetishes about…”

Deb’s eyes darkened. “So now he didn’t approach me because I had a nice ass. He came over because he’s an amputee pervert.”

“I’m just saying—”

“You’re acting like an asshole.”

Mal studied his shoes. He wanted to kneel down, help her put her snap-away pants back on, but he couldn’t align the snaps with one hand.

“Look,” he said, letting out a long breath. “I didn’t like that guy swaggering up to you.”

“Him? You swagger more than any guy I ever met.”

Maybe, once upon a time. But not lately.

He changed subjects. “Do you have the Xanax?”

“My purse.”

He sat next to her on the bench and pawed through her handbag. The medicine bottle had a child-proof cab on it, and after trying to pry it off with his teeth, he simply cradled it in his lap until Deb finished dressing. She reached over, held his hand.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I used to be fine flying. But now…”

“It’s okay to be afraid.”

He wanted to scream, to smash the pill bottle against the floor and stomp it to bits. Instead he clenched his teeth and whispered, “But I’m afraid of everything.”

“I know.”

“Including losing you.”

“I know.” Deb patted his hand. “And that’s not going to happen.”

“I’m sorry, Deb. You deserve better.”

“You’re all I need, Mal.”

She kissed his cheek. A kiss of pity, not love.

Mal felt his ears get hot. He endured the kiss without flinching away.

“Take a few, Mal. Zonk out on the plane.”

Mal nodded. But he wouldn’t. Deb couldn’t drive the rental car, which meant he had to, and alprazolam abuse and driving didn’t mix. So when Deb opened the bottle for him, Mal swallowed one, just to take the edge off, and then they shuffled into the terminal.

With an hour before boarding time, they stopped at the Burgh Sportz Bar in the Airmall. Deb had a chicken salad. Mal had a burger. When the food arrived it looked decent enough, but Mal’s stomach was sour and he picked at his French fries while watching Deb inhale her food. She’d talked him into coming to this stupid experiment, and even seemed optimistic about it. Bless her little heart, Deb considered this trip a hybrid of vacation and adventure.

Mal felt differently. He didn’t like confronting his fears in therapy, and he knew he’d abhor being purposely frightened. But the thing that bothered him most was being allowed to bring weapons.

What kind of government experiment allows the participants to be armed? What safeguards were in place to prevent someone from getting seriously hurt?

Mal had packed the gun in their check-in luggage, and both he and Deb had taken shooting lessons. But in fright’s grasp, Mal wouldn’t trust himself to hit a bus from a meter away. What if he fired wildly and hurt someone? What if he shot Deb? What kind of insane tests were going to be conducted on them that required firearms?

“Aren’t you hungry?”

He shook his head. Deb took that as an invitation to tear his burger in half and start munching. Mal stared at her, marveling at her resiliency. He wanted to tell her how much he loved her. How proud he was of her. She was two levels away from becoming a black belt. A double amputee, slowly becoming a karate master. Who could have ever guessed all she could accomplish? But instead of gushing his admiration, he thought of that CEO jerk hitting on her, and how she seemed to eat it up.

She’s going to figure out I’m a coward, and leave me.

Mal didn’t think he’d be able to handle that. But he was sure it was coming.

Someone bumped the back of Mal’s chair, and he turned to see a teenager standing next to the table. Chubby, almond-eyed, protruding tongue. Down Syndrome.

“What’s wrong with your hand?” the teen said, pointing at Mal’s prosthesis.

“I lost it. This one is made of rubber.”

“How did you lose it?”

A madman strapped me to a table and cut it off with a scalpel while I begged for him to stop.

“An accident,” Mal said. He looked at Deb, who was staring at the boy with wide eyes. While the teen was probably harmless, he was bringing up old memories. Bad memories.

“Where are your parents?” Mal asked, searching around for the child’s caretaker.

“You’re a freak,” the boy said.

Mal blinked. “What?”

“You’re a freak and you’re going to die.” He looked at Deb. “And so are you, lady.”

Mal began to stand up. “Look, kid—”

But the teenager stepped back and pointed, then began to yell, “FREAKS GONNA DIE! FREAKS GONNA DIE!”

Mal turned to his wife. Her face had lost all color, and she looked ready to throw up.

“FREAKS GONNA DIE!”

Again Mal looked for the boy’s father or mother, but instead he only saw people staring. Not only those in the restaurant, but passersby had also stopped to watch.

“FREAKS GONNA DIE!”

Finally an older woman came rushing over, tugging at the boy’s arm, saying “Calm down, Petey, calm down.” She offered Mal and Deb a quick, soulless I’m sorry, and then managed to pull her son away from their table as he continued to shout.

“FREAKS GONNA DIE!”

The woman tugged the child further into the terminal, until his voice melded in with the rest of the airport noise. In the restaurant, the clinking of silverware on plates resumed, and conversations picked up to levels prior to the interruption.

Mal, his whole body flushed and twitching, turned to his wife.

“You okay, babe?”

Deb’s face pinched, and then she vomited all over the table.

Solidarity, South Carolina

Forenzi

Dr. Emil Forenzi sat on the mattress—the one piece of furniture in his bedroom that wasn’t an antique—and squinted at the Bruno Magli loafers he’d just put on. There was a stain on the toe. He pulled it off and licked his thumb, rubbing off a reddish-brown streak.

Blood.

Forenzi couldn’t remember wearing the shoes in the lab area, and his mind wandered as to elsewhere he might have trod in bodily fluids. His revere was interrupted by a knock on the bedroom door.

“Enter,” he said, dropping the shoe next to the bed.

Sykes came in, holding a sheaf of papers. He silently presented them to Forenzi. It was reports on their guests.

Tom Mankowski, the cop, had just arrived at the airport. Excellent. He would make a sturdy test subject.

The amputees, Mallory and Deborah Dieter, had boarded their plane in Pittsburg. Forenzi had high hopes for them.

Dr. Frank Belgium and Sara Randhurst were due at Butler House any minute. Forenzi’s intel provided an interesting tidbit.

“They’re sharing a cab?” he said to Sykes. “Do they know each other?”

“I have no idea, sir.”

Forenzi glanced at him, caught a glimpse of the man’s sharp dentata.

“Do you mind if I ask you a personal question, Sykes?”

“Nothing is personal to me, sir.”

“Do you ever bite your tongue while eating?”

“As much as anyone else.”

Sykes didn’t elaborate. Forenzi flipped through more pages, seeing who else was attending, and frowned at the lack of a dossier on the VanCamps.

“Josh and Fran VanCamp didn’t confirm?”

“No, sir.”

Forenzi clucked his tongue. That was a shame. They would have been ideal.

No matter. This weekend would proceed without them, and it would be a success nonetheless.

“Have you spoken to your team?” he asked Sykes.

“Yes, sir. We’re ready.”

“My team?”

“I checked on them half an hour ago. Proceeding as scheduled.”

“Dinner?”

“Planned for seven, as requested.”

“Will we have those little Swedish meatballs? Those are wonderful.”

“Those are listed on the menu, sir.”

Forenzi nodded. In the hallway, floorboards creaked.

Both Forenzi and Sykes turned to look. No one was there.

“The ghosts are getting anxious,” Forenzi mused.

The paranormal history of Butler House was well-documented, and Forenzi had lost count of the strange phenomenon he’d encountered since coming here. Doors closing by themselves. Sharp drops in temperature. Strange odors. Creepy sounds. Last week, he was awoken from deep sleep, absolutely positive someone had been at the foot of his bed, watching him

“Do you believe in ghosts, Sykes?”

The man shrugged.

“So you aren’t afraid of the supernatural?”

“I’m not afraid of anything, sir.”

“Of course you’re not. Dismissed.”

The man left, closing the door behind him. Not much of a conversationalist, Sykes. But he had other areas of expertise.

Forenzi stood up and looked into the ornate, full-body mirror hanging above the bureau. He laced a tie through his collar and fussed with a half Windsor knot, trying to get it even. As he fought the fabric, he noticed something moving in the lower corner of the mirror.

The dust ruffle of the bed.

Forenzi looked down, behind him, and the rustling stopped.

Mice? Rats?

Something else?

And what happened to my shoe?

Forenzi searched the floor, turning in a full circle, looking for the loafer with the blood stain. He could have sworn he’d dropped it on the floor before Sykes came in.

Under the bed?

The doctor got on his hands and knees, ready to lift up the dust ruffle. But something gave him pause.

Behind the dust ruffle, something was making a sound. A distinct, recognizable sound.

Chewing.

I hear chewing.

A streak of panic flashed through Forenzi, and he crabbed backward, away from the bed. Then he quickly scanned the room for some sort of weapon. His eyes settled on an old, cast iron stove. Atop the bundle of kindling next to it was a fireplace poker.

Forenzi got to his feet and snatched the poker, turning back to the bed. Then he held his breath, listening.

The chewing was now accompanied by a slurping noise.

What the hell is that?

He knelt next to the bed, firmly gripping the poker with his right hand, reaching toward the dust ruffle with his left—

—and hesitated.

Do I really want to know what’s under there?

The chewing and slurping sounds stopped.

Forenzi continued to hold his breath, focusing on the silence.

After ten seconds, he let out a sigh, already starting to convince himself he’d imagined the whole thing.

Then he heard something else.

Scratching.

From under the bed. As if something was raking its nails on the floorboards.

Acting fast, before he lost his nerve, Forenzi lifted up the dust ruffle and jammed the poker underneath, flailing it around.

He didn’t hit anything. And the scratching sound stopped.

Forenzi leaned down, squinting under the bed. But it was too dark to see anything.

Moving the poker slowly, he swept it across the floor, kicking up vast colonies of dust clods. When his poker touched something solid, he retracted quickly—

—pulling out his missing loafer.

He stared at it, trying to make sense of what he saw. The shoe was damp with a viscous goo, and the toe had a large hole in it, surrounded by what appeared to be…

Bite marks.

Charleston, South Carolina

Tom

Fetzer Correctional Institution was known as a Level 3 prison. It housed the worst of the worst. Violent offenders and lifers did their time here, as did the death row inmates, up until their appeals ran out. In order to arrange a last-minute visit with one of its prisoners, Tom had to call in a big favor with his old boss, a retired Chicago Homicide Lieutenant named Daniels. She’d pulled a few strings and gotten him an audience with possibly the most depraved and sadistic murderer in this nation’s history, Augustus Torble. The millionaire heir who bought Butler House then tortured several women to death.

Tom drove the rental SUV to the perimeter fence, and an armed guard looked at Tom’s badge and checked his name on the visitor roster. Tom was allowed through the double fence, electrified and topped with razor wire, and he drove past one of the prison’s five gun towers. The main building was a red brick monstrosity that was among the drabbest, ugliest buildings Tom had ever seen. It had a flat façade devoid of any embellishments, save for barred windows and an arched entryway with ugly steel doors.

He parked in the visitor lot, and walked down a cracked, sun-baked sidewalk to the entrance. It was overcast and hot, the gray sky looking like it was ready to rain, but the humidity seemed strangely absent. Tom was buzzed in after being directed via intercom to look up into the security camera, providing them with video footage of his face.

Inside, he was met by two more armed guards, who led him without fanfare down a harshly lit hallway to a waiting room, where he was told to have a seat. Tom parked his butt on a steel bench bolted to the floor, and watched the clock on the wall—a clock housed in wire mesh. It was much more humid in the prison than outside. In fact, Tom almost immediately began to perspire, and wished he’d had a handkerchief to blot his forehead.

When two minutes passed, a dour woman in a frumpy pantsuit entered and frowned at him. She was accompanied by a guard.

“I’m the assistant warden, Miss Potter. You couldn’t have come at a worse time.” Her southern lilt making the last word sound like tahm. “The prisoner is being readied for transport.”

“Where is he going?” Tom asked.

“Out of my hair. Prisoner transfers are common, and I’m not always told the particulars.”

“Do you know the reason?”

“I wasn’t informed.” The way her mouth pursed told Tom that this annoyed her. “What is it you want with the prisoner?”

“I have some questions to ask him. About Butler House.”

Potter snorted. She removed a handkerchief from her jacket pocket and blotted the sweat on her neck. “That house is a blight on the beautiful state of South Carolina. Needs to be razed flat, if you ask me.”

“What have you heard about the house, Ma’am?”

“You mean, is it haunted? I deal in the real world, Detective. I see enough hatred and evil in men’s souls without having to blame the supernatural for it. But I’ll tell you something. I’ve had several interactions with Mr. Augustus Torble. And if there was ever a man possessed by demons, it’s him. Just last week he had an altercation with another prisoner over the last bag of potato chips. Mr. Torble bit the other prisoner’s finger off. When questioned about the incident he had to be restrained, because…”

Her voice drifted off, and Tom could detect a bit of flush in her cheeks.

“Ma’am?” he asked.

She blew out a stiff breath. “Because Mr. Torble was noticeably aroused by the incident, and kept playing with himself while being questioned.”

Tom kept his face neutral, professional.

“Has Torble had a lot of incidents like that?”

“More than his share. The other prisoners are afraid of him. Are you armed?”

Tom had left his gun in his luggage. “No, Ma’am.”

“Regulations insist on a pat down, to prevent weapons or other contraband from being passed to the prisoner. Would you mind standing up and raising your arms, Detective?”

Tom did as instructed, and the guard did a thorough frisking, going so far as to check each of Tom’s pockets.

“I’m to understand you’ve dealt with murderers before,” Potter said. “Your boss, Lieutenant Daniels, spoke highly of you. She apparently knows some very important people. Normally a spur of the moment visitation request from an out of town police officer would be denied. Especially during the time-sensitive and delicate procedure of transfer.”

“I’ll be sure to let Lt. Daniels know how hospitable and accommodating you and you staff have been.”

He didn’t bother to tell her Jack was retired, and the assistant warden’s efforts to get a pat on the head were likely for nothing.

“You have ten minutes,” Potter said.

“Has anyone told him I’m coming?”

“No. Only that someone wants to speak to him. But Torble is used to that. People are always coming by to pick his brain about something. Cops, psychiatrists, reporters. He gets so many visitors he could use a secretary. Or a press agent.” She turned to leave. “Don’t touch the prisoner, don’t pass anything to the prisoner. Your entire visit will be monitored and recorded. And Detective…”

“Ma’am?”

“Watch yourself. This one is as bad as they come.”

Potter nodded a goodbye, and the guard led Tom down another corridor and into a room with a reinforced door. Inside, an older man was sitting at a steel table attached to the floor like the one Tom had recently used. He wore an orange prison jumpsuit, and leg shackles, locked to a steel U bolt in the floor. His hands were also shackled to a thin chain encircling his waist, preventing him from raising his arms.

His gray hair was wild, uncombed, his face sporting three days of stubble. He was thin to the point of gaunt, and though his records stated he was sixty-two years old, he didn’t look much older than fifty. The killer’s eyes were deep set, dark, and had a glint to them. Intelligence, insanity, mirth, or maybe a combination of all three.

“Mr. Torble, my name is Detective Mankowski. Thank you for your time.”

“Call me Gus,” he said. His voice was unusually deep, and decidedly less southern than Miss Potter’s. “What’s your name?”

“I prefer to go by Detective. Or Mr. Mankowksi.”

“Have a seat, Detective. We have lots to talk about.”

Tom sat across the steel table from him. The killer crouched down a little, like a coil ready to spring. It was just as humid as the waiting room, and Tom continued to sweat. Torble, on the other hand, appeared cool and comfortable.

“I’d like to talk about Butler House.”

Torble smiled. “Good times. It has a torture chamber, you know. I called it the Happy Room. I had a hooker down there once, tied to a rack. Used boiling lard on her. Poured it all over her body, inch by inch. Did it every day for weeks. Put an IV in her to keep her hydrated. You know the smell of breakfast sausage, frying up in the pan? That’s what she smelled like. I swear, as often as not I’d be drooling after a session with her.”

Tom had prepared himself for this. Sadists like Torble got off on their ability to manipulate, to shock. So Tom forced his facial muscles to remain lax, and made sure his breathing was slow and steady. Reacting to psychopaths only egged them on.

“Did you ever do anything like that before buying Butler House?” he asked.

“You mean, did I skin kitty cats when I was a toddler? Or rough up whores?”

“Anything of that nature,” Tom said blandly.

Torble’s lips pressed crookedly together, and he looked off to the right, a poker tell that someone is searching for a truthful memory. “Nope. Can’t say that I had.”

“Did you ever notice anything odd about the house while you lived there?”

Torble studied him. “This is about the house? Not about trying to pin some old, unsolved crime on me?”

“I’m curious about the house.”

“You mean you’re curious if it’s haunted.”

Tom stayed silent.

Torble leaned back as far as his shackles allowed him. Tom couldn’t understand how the man wasn’t sweating. Tom himself felt like he’d dressed quickly after a particularly hot shower.

“My lawyer pressed for the insanity defense. Said we might persuade the jury that Butler House drove me crazy, based on its notorious reputation. That the devil was perched on my shoulder, whispering things in my ear. Tell me, is it insane to give your wife boiling water enemas? That was one way I punished her if she didn’t help with the whores. Also, I have to tell you, as far as gaining spousal compliance goes, nothing beats a sturdy pair of pliers.”

Breathe in, breathe out. Remain calm.

“Did Butler House drive you crazy, Gus?”

“Do you know how certain places have an energy to them, Detective? A vibe? Take this shithole, for instance. I bet, when you were driving up to the prison, you could feel the despair. The hopelessness. The desperation. I bet, if you closed your eyes and tried to tune into your senses, you could tell you were in a prison, even if you didn’t know. Care to try it?”

Tom wasn’t going to close his eyes in front of this loon. “I’ll take your word for it.”

“You want my opinions, but you don’t offer yours. That’s not very sociable.”

Tom breathed out. “Yeah, this feels like a prison.”

“Well, Butler House also has an energy. And I’m betting you haven’t been there, because you’d immediately know what energy I’m talking about.”

“What kind of energy, Gus?”

“That house feels evil. It exudes it, like a bog steams on cool nights. Terrible things have happened there, going back almost two hundred years. And terrible things will continue to happen there, as long as it stands.”

“Did you ever see anything supernatural while you were living there?”

“Do you mean ghosts, Detective?”

“I mean anything at all.”

“Have you ever seen anything supernatural?”

Tom has seen plenty of strange things, some practically impossible to comprehend. But the closest he’d gotten to anything supernatural was the writing on his bathroom mirror.

“Maybe,” Tom said.

“I had this one hooker, name was Amy. Sixteen years old, sweetest little smile on her. I started on her legs, using a branding iron, working my way up. I came back down to the chamber the next day, her chest is all branded. Someone wrote the word BITCH on it. But here’s the stinger. It wasn’t me. I didn’t brand that word on her. It wasn’t my wife, either, because she was in the punishment box. And I don’t think sweet little Amy did that to herself. That’s just one of many unexplainable things that happened at Butler House.”

“Is Butler House haunted, Gus?”

Augustus Torble smiled, and it was an ugly, twisted thing. “If ghosts and demons really do exist, Butler House is where you’ll find them.”

Despite the heat, Tom shivered.

“Do you know anything about experiments being done at Butler House?” he asked. “Tests?”

“What sort of tests?”

Tom didn’t answer, instead waiting for Gus to fill in the silence. The seconds ticked past.

“In prison, you hear things,” Gus finally said. “Things about the government, trying to cure soldiers of their fear. Let me tell you something, Detective. I know fear. I’ve seen it, up close. When you come at someone with a scalpel, and look them right in the eyes as you slip it into their thigh, you can witness fear in its purest, freshest form. And if they could come up with a cure for that, it would be quite a trick indeed.” Gus winked. “But it would also ruin a lot of fun.”

“So you’ve heard about a program like that?”

Torble shrugged. “I’ve heard lots of things.”

“Have you heard about any connection between government experiments and the Butler House.”

“I’ll answer that, but first I want you to answer something for me, Detective. What do you know about fear?”

Without being able to prevent it, Tom thought back to when he had first met Joan. What they’d gone through together in Springfield. The maniacs that tried to kill him. The horrors in the basement.

“Yes,” Torble said, studying him. “You know fear. But unfortunately for you, I cannot confirm nor deny any connection between government experiments and Butler House. But I can show you something that might surprise you. Interested?”

Tom offered a slight nod.

Torble grunted, then began to shake all over. His face turned deep red, the veins in his neck bulging out. Tom was wondering if the guy was having a stroke, or a heart attack. He was about to call for the guard when, quite suddenly, Torble’s hand slapped onto the metal table between them with a BAM! His bleeding wrist still had the cuff on it, but the chain that had wound around his waist was broken.

“I SEE YOUR FEAR!” Torble thundered as the guards rushed in and pounced on him. “YOUR FEAR WILL BE THE DEATH OF YOU, TOM!”

Torble was tackled, pinned to the table while screaming incoherently, and Tom stood up and moved back, too surprised to speak. Another guard escorted him out into the hall, leading him to the exit.

Tom wasn’t sure what he’d actually come here to learn, and wasn’t sure he’d learned anything. Maybe Torble knew something. Maybe he was just a nut who got his jollies trying to scare cops.

If that was the case, it worked. Tom was thoroughly mortified. Not because of his crazy admissions to atrocious deeds. Tom had met plenty of terrible specimens of humanity. Not because he broke his shackles. That was surprising, but not unprecedented. It was well known that people on drugs, or just insane in general, could snap handcuffs.

No, what bothered him most was what Torble had said. Potter had stated Torble hadn’t known Tom was coming.

Yet, somehow, without being told, Torble had called Tom by his first name.

Outside of Charleston, South Carolina

Sara

“Do something, Frank,” Sara said. “It’s suffering.”

They were staring at the side of the road. On the asphalt, in the middle of a small spattering of blood, a cardinal was twitching its broken wing.

“It’s dead, Sara. That’s just a reflex. It hit our windshield going over seventy miles an hour.”

“Are you sure.”

“Yes yes yes. But if this makes you feel better…”

Sara looked away as Frank stomped hard on the cardinal with a sickening crack.

She immediately dug her hand into her purse, locking her fingers around one of the miniature bottles of Southern Comfort. Her buzz was wearing off, and the situation wasn’t improving. They’d tried calling for another cab, but none would take them to the Butler House. Frank was in favor of going back to the airport and renting a car, but their bags were in the cab’s trunk, which wouldn’t open. After hitting the bird, the car swerved off the road and the tail end smacked into a tree. They had to wait for the tow truck driver to arrive with tools to open the back.

Just one sip. To make the fear go away.

She released the bottle. Sara knew she used alcohol to cope. But she refused to believe she was dependent on it. Also, she was starting to like the odd, soft-spoken Dr. Belgium, and wanted to stay relatively clear-headed because she enjoyed his company.

It had been a long time since she enjoyed anyone’s company. After what happened on Plincer’s Island, Sara was certain she’d never trust a man again. But there was something about Frank that was, well… frank. He seemed kind, sincere, and even kind of cute. She didn’t even mind the odd way he spoke, repeating words.

But most important of all, he made Sara feel safe. If she’d been alone in the cab when they hit the cardinal, she would have been hysterical and drinking SoCo like water. But Frank’s presence soothed her. Maybe because he lived through a hellish experience, like she had. Or maybe it was just chemistry.

Sara took her hand out of her purse, and tried to seem nonchalant about it when she placed it in Frank’s. He glanced at her, his eyes widening. But his fingers clasped softly around hers, and all thoughts of drinking slipped from Sara’s mind.

“Thanks for doing that,” she said.

“I could, um, step on it a few more times, if you want.”

“That’s okay. This is really forward of me, Frank, but are you seeing anyone?”

“No. I haven’t… I… it’s been a very long time, Sara.”

“For me, too.”

As Sara stared at him, it occurred to her she’d forgotten how to flirt. She wondered how she looked, no make-up, hair probably a fright. She also wondered how Frank would react to the fact she had a child. Sara hadn’t tried to date anyone recently, but she guessed most men wouldn’t be interested in a pre-made family.

“I have a son,” she blurted out. “Jack. Would you like to see a picture?”

She watched his eyes, searching for any hint of rejection.

“Of course,” he said.

Sara reached into her purse with her free hand, took out her wallet. The only picture in it was of Jack, in his high chair, smiling and eating strained peaches.

“He’s adorable. And his father?”

Sara shook her head.

“I don’t mean to pry, but that painting on the wall behind him,” Frank said. “Is that Van Gogh’s Portrait of a Woman in Blue?”

“It’s a fake. Long story. I thought it was real. But the real one is in a museum in Amsterdam.”

“I’d like to hear that story someday.”

“I’d like to tell it someday. Maybe when we’re done with the weekend. Where do you live, Frank?”

“Pittsburgh. You?”

“Michigan. Near the coast.”

“Which coast?” Frank asked, holding up his left hand with his fingers together and his thumb slightly out.

Sara smiled. Because Michigan looked like a mitten, that was how residents showed where they lived. She touched the base of his index finger.

“So who is taking care of Jack while Mom is off visiting haunted houses?”

“After… what happened to me, I was having some trouble coping. Jack was taken by social services. I haven’t seen him in six months.”

“I’m sorry.” Frank gave her hand a squeeze. “I can’t even imagine what that must be like.”

“That’s why I’m here. If I get the money, I can hire a lawyer, get my son back.”

“Are you well enough to care for him?”

The question pinned Sara there as surely as if she’d been staked to the ground. Was she well enough? Her recent behavior didn’t indicate she was. If anything, she’d gotten worse since they took Jack away.

So how do I respond? Bravado? Lie so I don’t look like a bad person?

Or the truth?

Frank seemed patient. Understanding. Sara didn’t know if anything would become of this chance meeting, but she didn’t want to start their relationship with lies. Even if it made her look weak.

“I don’t think I am well enough, Frank. But right now, my hope is gone, because it isn’t possible to get him back. If I had some hope again, I think I could pull myself together.”

Frank nodded, slowly. “I don’t know you at all. But—and this is odd—I I I feel I do. You remind me of a woman I know named Sunshine Jones.”

Sara raised an eyebrow. “Former girlfriend?”

“No. I worked with her, every day, and never had a chance to tell her how much I thought of her. Bright. Tough. Pretty. She had this indefatigable spirit. I think you do, too.”

“That’s kind of you to say.”

“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t believe it.”

“What happened to Ms. Jones?”

“She married someone else. It was best. He’s a good man. But I always wonder what might have happened if I just just just… tried.”

“Sometimes trying is the hardest thing in the world.”

“I know a little something about hope, Sara. But I don’t think you’ve given up yet. I think you’ve just been kicked really hard.”

Sara really wished that was true. “Why do you think that, Frank?”

“Because I’ve been kicked pretty hard, too.”

She moved a little closer to him, trying to read his eyes. Frank Belgium had the kindest eyes Sara had ever seen.

Then a car pulled up next to them, and a guy yelled through the window.

“Everyone okay?”

“Yeah,” the cabbie said. He was leaning up against the crumpled trunk of the car, smoking a cheap stogie.

“Does anyone need any help?”

“No no no,” Frank said, smiling at Sara. “We’re doing fine.”

The man began to pull away when Sara yelled, “Wait!”

The car stopped, then backed up.

“Do you have a crowbar?” Sara asked.

“It’s a rental. There’s probably one.”

“Our luggage is stuck in the trunk. Can you give us a hand?”

He continued backing up until he was behind them, then pulled over to the side of the road. When he exited the vehicle, Sara saw he was tall, over six feet, moderate build with longish light brown hair streaked with gray. He opened his trunk, poked around for a bit, and found a crowbar.

The taxi driver spat on the street. “Hey buddy, you touch my cab with that, I’ll call the police.”

“I am the police,” the man said, producing a badge.

The cabbie shrugged.

“Thanks so much,” Frank said. “Several cars have passed, but you’re the first one to stop.”

“What happened?”

“Bird flew into the windshield.”

The cop eyed the dented trunk. “Must have been one helluva bird.”

“I’m Frank,” he offered his hand, which the cop shook. “This is Sara.”

“Tom. Nice to meet you both.”

Tom pressed the flat end of the crowbar between the trunk lid and the fender, and gave it a fierce twist. It instantly popped open.

“Thanks, Tom.” Sara reached into the grab her bag, grateful it was dry. She had two more bottles of Southern Comfort in it, and a leak would have been both embarrassing, and worrying. If she was going to be involved with a fear experiment, she wanted to have liquor nearby.

“I know it’s a lot to ask,” Frank said. “But would you mind taking us back to the airport to rent a car? I’ll pay you for your time.”

“I’m kind of running late,” Tom said. “Can’t you call a cab?”

“We’re going to a place cabs are afraid to go,” Sara chimed in. “It’s called Butler House.”

“In Solidarity?”

“You know it?” Frank asked.

“No. But that’s where I’m headed. Some kind of fear study.”

“So are we,” Frank said. “Would you mind if we tagged along?”

“Not at all.”

“Sara?” Frank turned to her.

She really liked that he asked her opinion. “Can I see your badge again?”

Tom offered his star.

“Chicago,” she said.

“The Windy City. I’m a detective.”

Frank appraised him. “Did anyone ever tell you that you look like Thomas Jefferson?”

“I may have heard that once or twice. You guys coming along?”

Sara handed his badge back. “Thanks, Tom. I think we will.”

Tom held out his hand to take Sara’s bag, and he placed it and Frank’s in his trunk along with the crowbar.

“Would you like the front front front seat, Sara?” Frank asked.

He was doing the nice thing by offering, but still looked slightly disappointed. Sara thought it was adorable.

“Thank you, Frank. But would it be okay if I sat in the back with you?”

Frank nodded several times in rapid succession. “Of course.”

Sara looked at Tom’s rental car. It was a compact. Which meant it would be cramped in the back.

She was looking forward to it.

Deb

“You gotta be fucking me with a wet noodle.”

The woman in the rental car line ahead of Deb and Mal had pink and green hair, a mouth that would make a trucker blush, and an apparent problem with her credit card.

“I ran the card twice, Ms. Draper. I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to get out of line.”

“I’ve got a five hundred dollar limit on that goddamn card, pencil dick. And a zero fucking balance. The car is only fifty bucks a day, and I’m returning it tomorrow.”

“The deposit is five hundred dollars, Ms. Draper. Unfortunately, that maxes out your credit card and leaves you nothing to pay for the rental.”

Deb felt bad for the woman. She’d been in a situation like that before.

“I’ve only got thirty bucks on me. I’m running cash poor today. Can’t you help a fucking lady out?”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Draper.”

“I’ll blow you.”

The clerk did a double-take. “Excuse me?”

“I’ll take you in the guy’s shitter and suck your Slim Jim if you get me this car.”

“Uh… as romantic as that sounds, I’m married.”

“Which probably means you need head more than most.”

Mal, who had been sullen and inconsolable on the airplane, actually snickered at that and gave Deb a nudge.

She whispered to Mal, smiling. “What? I give you head all the time.”

“Once a week is not all the time, Deb,” he whispered back.

“If it were up to you, it would be every two hours.”

The rental car clerk raised his voice. “If you don’t leave the line right now, Ms. Draper, I’m calling airport security.”

Ms. Draper was seemingly unperturbed. “If you’re shy because you have a micropenis, don’t be. I’ve seen all types. It actually makes it easier for me to deep throat. And if you got a problem getting it up, I can stick my finger up your ass, work that prostate.”

The rental car guy reached for the phone on the counter.

“You know what, assbag?” Ms. Draper said. “Tomorrow I’m going to be a million dollars richer. And I’m going to buy your goddamn little car rental business here, and make you clean toilets with your tongue for six bucks an hour.”

She threw up her hands in a dismissive matter and spun around, facing Mal and Deb.

Several things flashed through Deb’s mind at once. The first was Draper’s million dollar comment. Obviously she had been invited to Butler House as well. The second was that this green and pink haired woman had pocked scars covering her face, as if she’d had a severe case of acne as a teen. But these also covered her neck, and as Deb’s eyes travelled down her low-cut blouse, her cleavage as well.

Those weren’t acne scars. They were man-made.

“Enjoy the show?” she asked Deb, a sneer on her face.

“Very much so,” Deb replied. “You want to ride with us? We’re heading to Butler House.”

The woman raised an eyebrow. “No shit. Really?”

“Sure,” Mal said. “And you don’t have to suck my Slim Jim.”

“But if you want to stick your finger up his ass,” Deb said, “be my guest.”

“Please don’t stick your finger up my ass,” her husband said. “I’m cool.”

Ms. Draper eyed each of them up and down, apparently taking notice of Deb’s prosthetic legs and Mal’s rubber hand. Then she smiled.

“I’m Moni Draper. Pleased ta meetcha both.”

There was a round of hand shaking, and Mal approached the clerk at the desk.

“Would you really have blown the rental car guy?” Deb asked.

“Girlfriend, I’ve done a lot more for a lot less, back when I was strung out.” She dug into her shoulder bag and took out a pack of cigarettes, even though there were No Smoking signs posted everywhere throughout the airport. She lit up with one of those jet lighters, where the flame was blue-green and hissed. Deb noticed her hands were also covered with pock marks.

“So what do you do?” Moni asked.

“I’m an athlete.”

“With no legs? No shit. Good for you, babe. What sport?”

“Marathons. Triathlons.”

“You can make money like that?”

“I’ve got sponsors,” Deb answered.

“Wait a sec. Were you that bitch in that energy drink commercial?”

Moni used the word bitch like she used the word babe, with obvious affection.

“That was a while ago.”

“I used to drink that stuff all the time. I remember you, on that bicycle and shit. In those cute little biking pants.”

Deb still had those biking pants, and they were, indeed, cute.

“What do you do?” Deb asked.

“Model.”

Deb wasn’t sure what to say to that, then Moni winked.

“Kidding, of course. I’m actually an escort. Topping. Domme stuff.”

“Like a prostitute?”

“Back in the day I was. Streetwalker. But I had a close encounter with a maniac who cut me up pretty good, as you can plainly see. So now I only do in house calls to select clients. The scars are actually a plus, because they make me look scarier.”

“So a domme is a dominatrix?”

“You betcha. Money is better, and I don’t have to fuck them.”

Deb was curious. “So what do you actually do to guys if you aren’t sleeping with them?

“All kinds of crazy shit. Tie ‘em up. Slap them around. Spank them. Make them lick my boots. Pee on them. Figging.”

“Figging?”

“You don’t want to know. Point is, I’m in control, the bottoms love it, and the money is good. At least, it used to be good. I’ve been semi-retired for a while.” Moni took a big draw on her cigarette, then blew the smoke out of her nostrils. “Went back to school. But I’m almost out of money, and I figured I’d have to start scheduling clients again. Then I got the invite to this fear thing, and I was like, holy shit, I finally got a lucky break. Hopefully I’ll never have to fig a guy again.”

“You have to tell me what figging is.”

Moni grinned and winked. “Trust me. You’re better off not knowing.”

Mal motioned for them to follow him, and they were led to the parking garage and a mid-size sedan. The clerk made a concentrated effort to ignore Moni. Deb, however, was really starting to like the woman. The incident at the restaurant back in Pittsburgh had really rattled her. But Moni was getting Deb’s mind off of that, and also helping break the tension between her and Mal. Deb knew her husband was going on this trip for her, and didn’t think any good could come from it. What Mal didn’t understand was that Deb needed to do something, anything, because it beat doing nothing. Even if it didn’t work, it was worth a try.

“So you can run with those fake legs on?” Moni asked.

“Not well. These are my walking legs. I’ve got a different pair for running.”

“Cool. And your husband, does he have different hands too?”

“Mal just has the cosmetic hand. It isn’t functional. It’s just for show.”

“But they have functional ones. I’ve got a client, a real live private eye, he’s missing a hand. He can break a beer bottle with his fake one. Also, it vibrates.”

Deb shot Moni a that’s bullshit look. “Seriously?”

“Variable speeds and everything. The guy is a bit of a nut, but that fake hand is something every man should have. Make your hubby buy one.”

Mal never bought a mechanical prosthesis. He felt it would be a constant reminder of what he no longer had. Instead, he tried to pretend that his entire left arm no longer existed.

“Thank you very much, Mr. Deiter,” the clerk said after having Mal walk around the car and signing the agreement stating it had no damage. “Enjoy your stay in Charleston.”

“Oh, we’re not staying in Charleston. We’re going to Solidarity.”

“Not… Butler House?” The clerk’s voice had gone up an octave.

Mal didn’t answer, and Deb knew why. When they’d called to confirm their attendance, the recording said informing others about the experiment would disqualify them.

“What’s Butler House?” Mal asked, obviously playing dumb.

“It’s… it’s the most evil place on earth. Whatever you do, stay away from that house, Mr. Deiter. And may God go with you.”

The clerk did a quick about-face and rushed past Deb and Moni, in a sudden and unwarranted hurry. Deb watched the man as he passed, and the expression on his face was pure fear.

He looked like he’d just seen a ghost.

Tom

The private driveway leading up to Butler House wasn’t paved, and Tom almost missed the turn because the entrance was overgrown with brush. Only a sign reading 683 AUBURN ROAD, hanging on a wooden post mostly obscured by vines, gave any indication there was a road there.

“We’re about to get bumpy,” he told Frank and Sara as he pulled the car off the paved street and onto a dirt trail.

Bumpy was an understatement. Ten yards into the woods, Tom realized he should have rented something with all-wheel drive. First they hit a ditch that made their undercarriage scrape against the ground, then the car almost got stuck on a mound of dirt, Tom having to gun the engine before the tires gained traction.

The pair in the back seemed to be enjoying themselves, the rough terrain giving them an excuse to bump into each other. During the car ride, Tom had ascertained they’d just met, but they seemed to be hitting it off very well. The Dutch courage he smelled on their breath might have been one of the reasons for that, but Tom also felt strangely comfortable with the duo. Tom remembered meeting Joan, and at the same time he’d also met two guys named Abe and Bert. Tom still spoke with Bert regularly, and he and Bert visited Abe in the hospital six months ago. Abe, a used car salesmen, had sold a clunker to a man who was unhappy with his purchase, and even unhappier with Abe’s refund policy. The guy had expressed his displeasure by chasing Abe around the car lot with a baseball bat and ultimately breaking his leg.

When he’d met Bert, Abe, and to some extent, Joan, there had been a familiarity there that was unusual. Akin to going to a high school reunion and seeing people you hadn’t seen in twenty years. But he hadn’t met Abe, Bert, or Joan before, just like he hadn’t met Frank and Sara. Yet Tom felt immediately comfortable around them. Like they were destined to be friends.

It might have had to do with shared experiences. Like Tom, both Frank and Sara had apparently lived through something awful. So even though they each came from different walks of life—a homicide cop, a counselor for wayward teens, and a molecular biologist—they were still birds of a feather.

Tom drove through the thicket, which then opened up into marshland, acres of cattails in all directions. The mild wind blowing made them sway, like waves rolling across a brown and green sea. The effect was weirdly hypnotic, made even more so because some of the cattail spikes—thick tubes on the top of each stalk that resembled cigars—had begun to seed, turning them into white tufts. Like dandelions, the white seeds floated on the breeze, giving the appearance of a snow flurry. It made Tom feel eerie, and somehow alone. Even the duo in back, who’d spent a majority of the car ride gabbing, went silent at the spectacle.

“This is… creepy,” Sara finally said.

“I don’t believe in a netherworld,” Belgium said. “But if one exists, this is how I picture it.”

They drove more than a kilometer through the undulating plants, and then things got creepier when Butler House came into view.

It seemed to rise up out of the cattails, looking both incongruous to its surroundings, and also as if it had been there since time began. Gray, sprawling, and decrepit, it might have once been regal, but now appeared way past its prime. Even from the distance, Tom could sense its decay. The roof seemed to slump in the center. The walls looked slightly crooked. The entire house appeared to lean to the left, ready to collapse during the next big storm. Which, judging by the ominous gray clouds overhead, could be any minute.

When they got within a hundred meters of the house, Tom saw a small guard station, no bigger than a porta-potty, and a steel gate barring the path. As Tom approached, a man in a suit and tie came out of the tiny building and held up his hand to stop them. He wore sunglasses, even though it was overcast, and Tom saw a glimpse of a shoulder holster beneath his jacket.

Tom stopped next to him and rolled down the window. He immediately wrinkled his nose. The air stank of sour, like carnations going bad.

“IDs,” the guard said.

Everyone fished out their driver’s licenses, and when Tom collected all three he passed them over. The guard gave each a cursory glance, and handed them back. Then he returned to his little booth and the gate swung open.

“Talkative fellow,” Belgium said.

“Even money he’s former military,” Tom told him.

“How do you know?” Sara asked.

“He had a bearing about him. A stillness, but alert at the same time. A lot of cops have that, too.”

“How do you know he wasn’t a cop?”

“Cops ask questions. Soldiers follow orders.”

Tom continued on to the house, which seemed to grow in size faster than they approached. By the time they parked on the grass near the front door, Butler House blocked more than half the sky. It wasn’t particularly bright out to begin with, but in the house’s shadow it felt dark as night.

“Well well well,” Belgium said. “It’s even uglier up close.”

Tom agreed. They could now see the broken shutters, the peeling paint, the cracked masonry. Thorny weeds jutted out of the ground next to the crumbling foundation. One of the chimneys had several bricks missing.

“Looks like someone picked up the house and dropped it,” Sara said after they exited the vehicle.

Tom couldn’t help but remember the Butler House website, and all of the atrocities committed here. Augustus Torble’s words popped into his mind.

That house feels evil. It exudes it, like a bog steams on cool nights.

Tom had dismissed the words as lunacy. But standing in front of the house, it didn’t feel a part of his world. Almost as if, at any moment, it would sprout hundreds of black, oily tentacles and devour them all.

He did not want to go inside.

“You look like I feel, Tom,” Belgium said. “I don’t see how any good can come from us going in in in there.”

The front double doors, arched and barred with wrought iron fleur de lis, opened outward. The trio immediately took a step backward, and Tom’s hand went to his chest, seeking the shoulder holster and gun that weren’t there, still packed in his bag.

Standing in the doorway, flanked by two military men in gray suits, was Dr. Emil Forenzi. Tom recognized him from online pictures. He was a wisp of a man, tufts of white hair over his ears that looked a lot like cattail seeds, back beginning to bend with age. His suit was blue poplin, tailored, his necktie tan. His smile was broad and looked genuine.

“Welcome to Butler House. I’m so pleased to see you all. Three of our guests have already arrived, and we’re expecting three more. Detective Mankowski, if you’d be so kind as to give my men your keys, they’ll park the car and take your bags to your rooms.

Tom handed over the rental car automatic starter, then took Forenzi’s outstretched hand. It was delicate and boney, like a fledgling bird.

“I am Dr. Forenzi. It’s a pleasure, Detective. I’ve followed your exploits closely. You’re a remarkable man, on so many levels.”

Then the doctor turned to Sara. “Greetings, Ms. Randhurst.” He clasped her hand in both of his. “I’ve read about your extraordinary bravery. It is an honor to meet you in person. And Dr. Belgium…” Another handshake with Frank. “I’m so eager to talk to you. Apologies for the… crude… way you were beckoned here. Come in, come in, meet the others.”

Forenzi led them through the doors, and when Tom crossed the threshold he heard a strange humming sound. It disappeared immediately, and before he could think about it Tom was facing Butler House’s great room.

The website pictures didn’t do it justice. The space was massive, a two story cavernous area that was big enough to comfortably seat King Kong. The light came from three gigantic deer antler chandeliers, hanging from the rafters on thick chains. Each contained at least a hundred antlers, and they were asymmetrical and seemed thrown together. Like big heaps of bones.

The centerpiece of the great room, a ceiling high stone fireplace, easily utilized several tons of granite. Impressive as it was, it wasn’t lit, and Tom felt a chill when he stared at it.

Various chairs and tables were scattered around the room, some obviously new, others outdated and in need of repair. Though the chandeliers were big, they weren’t enough to adequately light the space. Plus they threw strange shadows across the walls and floor.

Seated near each other were two men and a woman. Forenzi led them across a frayed, drab Persian rug and stood in the middle of everyone.

“Might I introduce our new arrivals. Chicago cop Tom Mankowski, who has worked several serial killer cases, but his claim to fame has to be the part he played in the tragedy at the late Senator Philip Stang’s mansion.”

Tom remained calm, even though those words hit like a blow. He had no idea how Forenzi found out about that. But he intended to ask him as soon as they were alone. That, and questions about Roy. But for the time being, he needed to just watch and listen.

“Sara Randhurst survived a terrifying ordeal on Rock Island in Michigan, including several encounters with feral cannibals, and a well-known serial killer named Lester Paks. A sadist who filed his teeth down to points and chewed his victims to death.”

Tom glanced at Sara, and even in the dim light he could see her face had gone white.

“And Dr. Frank Belgium, a molecular biologist who actually encountered Satan himself.”

Sara’s head jerked in his direction. “Frank? Really?”

“I really can’t talk about that that that, Dr. Forenzi. It’s highly classified. And how did you happen to hear about…”

“Dr. Belgium, meet Aabir Gartzke, psychic medium, sensitive, and clairvoyant extraordinaire.”

Aabir stood and gave a theatrical bow. She was a tall woman with dark, Slavic features, her long black hair pulled back in a severe ponytail. Her dozens of silver and gold bracelets jangled as she moved, and the loose blouse she wore wouldn’t have been out of place on an eighteenth century gypsy.

“I have met you all already, in my dreams and visions. Detective Mankowski, how is Joan’s latest movie coming along?”

Tom played coy. “If you’re clairvoyant, shouldn’t you already know that?”

Aabir smiled. “Indeed. The writer acquiesced, changed the scene as instructed. Right now, your girlfriend is in the star’s trailer, discussing wardrobe. And Sara, no need to worry, my dear. Jack will be returned to you soon.”

“It doesn’t take a psychic to know that,” Sara said.

“Of course not. I could have easily gotten that through the court records. But you will be pleased to know that Jack is walking now. He’s doing well with his foster family, but he still has memories of you and misses how you used to sing to him.”

“I… I need to use the bathroom,” Sara’s voice cracked, and she began to walk off.

“Down that hallway,” Forenzi pointed, “third door on the right.”

“Sara?” Belgium began to go after her. But she stopped him by saying, “I’m fine, Frank, I just need a minute.”

“Dr. Belgium,” Aabir continued, “have your friends Sun and Andy told you yet they’re pregnant?”

He looked at his shoes. “No, they haven’t.”

“If it’s a boy, his middle name will be Frank. And it will be a boy.”

“Impressive, Ms. Gartzke,” Forenzi said. “Aabir’s skills have helped police find four missing children, and two murderers. But, like each of you, she is here at Butler House to face one of her greatest fears.”

“There are many kinds of spirits,” Aabir said. “Ghosts are the residual energy of human beings after they have died. Poltergeists are attached to particular locations. They reenact the same scene, again and again. Usually scenes of violence or death. But the last type of spirit is the dangerous one. The kind that has no earthly counterpart.”

“Demons,” Dr. Forenzi said, nodding.

“Demons are malevolent entities that feed on the energy of the living. I have encountered demons in the past. They are extremely dangerous. In some cases, they can even kill. Demons frighten me deeply.”

“You don’t seem frightened right now,” Tom stated.

Aabir put her hands on her hips and stuck out her chin. “I performed a cleansing ritual on this room, so they can’t enter. But there are many demons in this house. I can feel them, like eyes on the back of my neck.”

Tom recalled how he was sure someone had been watching him while he was sitting at Roy’s desk, but no one had been there.

“Have you ever encountered a demon, Mr. Pang?”

“No, I haven’t,” said the Asian man sitting next to Aabir. He had broad shoulders and a compact frame, and a pencil mustache on his upper lip. “That’s because demons, like ghosts and poltergeists, don’t exist.”

“Woo-jin Pang runs a company that specializes in debunking paranormal activity.”

“Science has been unable to prove the existence of a spirit world.”

“Science also hasn’t been able to prove it doesn’t exist,” Aabir countered.

“It isn’t up to science to disprove a wild claim, bro. It is up to the person making the wild claim to show scientific evidence of it. If I say I have a leprechaun in my backpack, the burden of proof is on me.”

“And you’ve never encountered anything you can’t explain?”

“Of course I have. But not being able to explain a phenomenon doesn’t mean it should be automatically attributed to the spirit world. I was using my EMF meter at a client’s home two weeks ago—”

“Excuse me,” Tom said. “That’s the second time I’ve heard those initials. What’s an EMF meter?”

The ghost hunter rolled his eyes. “It tests for electromagnetic fields. Supposedly EMFs are disrupted by supernatural activity. It’s one of many tools used to measure conditions we can’t see, bro. So I was using the meter, and it kept spiking. We ruled out appliances, cell phones, fuse boxes, the air conditioning. We even killed the main power at the breaker. It still kept spiking.”

“And you’re saying that wasn’t a spirit?” Aabir asked.

“It wasn’t a spirit. There was a storm ten miles away. My equipment is so sensitive it was picking up lightning strikes.”

“Mr. Pang claims he’s never been frightened while doing paranormal research,” Forenzi said, smiling politely. “We’ll see if Butler House changes his mind.”

Pang crossed his arms over his chest. “If ghosts do exist and they’re here, I’ll find them.”

“And last,” Forenzi said, “but certainly not least, is perhaps the only person in the world more skeptical than Mr. Pang, bestselling author Cornelius Wellington.”

Cornelius Wellington was in his fifties, wearing a sweater vest, glasses, and a graying Van Dyke beard.

“Pleased to meet you all,” Wellington boomed. He pronounced all as awl, and sounded a lot like John Lennon. “I’m very much looking forward to the proceedings, Dr. Forenzi. I’m sure you have quite the little show concocted for us.”

Forenzi chuckled. “Mr. Wellington is known for his books that debunk the supernatural. Due to his certainty that spirits do not exist, he’s convinced I have turned Butler House into something akin to the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. Animatronic specters and people in masks jumping out to yell ‘Boo!’”

“I certainly hope so, Doctor. That will be exceedingly more exciting than sitting around waiting for ghosts to make contact.”

There was a booming knock on the front doors, and everyone turned to watch as one of the guards opened them up, revealing three people, two women and a man.

“Ah, the rest of our party has arrived.” Dr. Forenzi smiled so broadly Tom could see his molars. “And so it begins.”

Mal

Mal winced at the steak on the plate in front of him. It looked, and smelled, divine.

But try cutting filet mignon with only one hand.

The enormous banquet table everyone sat at was one of the original furnishings, according to Dr. Forenzi, who held court at the head of it. He’d been telling stories about the various ghosts said to haunt Butler House. They included:

Blackjack Reedy, a one-eyed slave master who roamed the hallways with a whip.

Sturgis Butler, who was charred to the bone and smelled like burnt pork.

Jebediah Butler, who floated from room to room on a puddle of his own blood, which constantly leaked from his flayed skin.

Ol’ Jasper, a slave with four arms who dragged a machete around. You knew he was close when you could hear the sound of him dragging his long blade across the floor.

The Giggler, a masked demon who would mutilate himself in order to instill fear.

Colton Butler, carrying his bag of ghastly surgical instruments, still trying to conduct his insane experiments upon the living.

Mal was only half-paying attention. His mood had brightened a little since the awful airport experience, mostly due to Moni Draper’s irrepressible personality. She talked nonstop about unrelated topics—what Mal referred to as diarrhea of the mouth—but was so upbeat and foul-mouthed that it was like watching a stand-up comic.

But Moni’s energy evaporated once they entered Butler House. As pleasant a host as Dr. Forenzi attempted to be, there was a very real and very bad feeling that hung in the air, like a blanket pressing down upon them all. Mal was nervous, boarding on paranoid. He was also hungry, and staring at the slab of meat before him made him depressed as well.

A moment later, his plate was switched with a steak already cut into pieces. He glanced at Deb, sitting next to him, and she was now busily cutting her new steak, not even acknowledging what she’d done.

“A wonderful set-up, Doctor,” Wellington said after patting his lips with a linen napkin. “So now, when we see one of your actors limping through the hallways with a satchel of scalpels, we’re supposed to be terrified. The power of suggestion leaves us more receptive to strange phenomenon, and more susceptible to accepting them.”

“Indeed, that would be the proper way to conduct a fear study,” Forenzi admitted. “But all I can offer you is my word that I haven’t hired any actors to try to scare you people.”

“What exactly are we supposed to do to get our million bucks?” Moni asked, her mouth full of baked potato.

“It is simple. After dinner, my associate Dr. Madison will take a small sample of your blood and conduct a brief physical to ascertain your general health. Then, tomorrow, another sample of your blood shall be taken.” Forenzi winked. “Should you survive, of course. Which is why I’ve had all of you sign waivers.”

“You’ve conducted this experiment before?” Tom, the cop, asked.

“Not quite in this way. But we have had guests before.”

“And what happened to them?” Tom continued.

The doctor laughed. “Naturally, they all died of fright.”

There were a few nervous titters around the table, but the cop didn’t join them.

“Allow me a self-indulgent moment to explain my research, and why each of you are so important.” Forenzi pushed back his chair and stood up, spreading his hands.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re all here today as self-aware, sentient beings. Perhaps some of you believe in the afterlife, spirits, souls, God and the devil. Perhaps some of you find all of it, to use one of Mr. Wellington’s words, poppycock.”

Mal hadn’t heard the writer use that word yet, but he could imagine it easily enough.

“But what makes us believe what we believe? Our differences really are tiny compared to our similarities. We’re all made of the same stuff. We’re all 99.9% identical, genetically. Am I correct, Dr. Belgium?”

“Yes yes yes, you are so far.”

“Doctor, if you wouldn’t mind, can you provide the group with your learned definition of life?”

“Life? Well, all living things, in order to to to be considered alive, have to meet certain criteria. These criteria vary, depending on the scientist. But I’d define life as a structure that can reproduce, respire, create energy for itself, and respond to environmental changes. Also, life can cease.”

“By that definition, fire is alive,” Forenzi said.

“Fire is a chemical process known as combustion.”

“But isn’t life also a chemical process?”

“Well, yes.” Belgium nodded several times. “It certainly certainly certainly is.”

“We are all made of chemicals.” Forenzi swept his hands across the table, grandiosely indicating all seated there. “Chemical reactions allow us to metabolize food and oxygen, and excrete waste. They are responsible for cell division. Aging. The very thoughts we have in our heads. Emotions. Dr. Belgium, can you elucidate the chemistry of emotion?”

“Well, in response to a stimulus, or in some cases due to a problem with the limbic system, our body releases neurotransmitters and hormones, which dictate how we feel feel feel about certain things. Watch a sad movie, we cry. When we meet someone we like, we bond. These are chemicals we manufacture ourselves, which we’ve evolved to help us adapt to various situations.”

“A mother’s instant affection for her child when it is born isn’t due to love,” Forenzi said, focusing on Sara. “At least, not love alone. It is because, during childbirth, the mother’s body floods with oxytocin. Not only does that jump start lactation, but it also forces the incredibly strong emotion of maternal love. Which brings us to fear.”

Forenzi spread out his palms, like a preacher orating to his congregation.

“My friends, I have isolated the neurotransmitter that activates the fear response. Which means, very soon, I’ll discover a way to control fear.”

Mal, who’d been greedily devouring the steak his wife had cut for him, suddenly gave Dr. Forenzi 100% of his attention.

“You can cure fear?” he said.

“I’m very close, Mr. Deiter. Fear begins in the amygdala, which is located in the medial temporal lobes of the brain. When you are frightened, it releases hormones and neurotransmitters that stimulate the fear response. You are aware of the symptoms. Paranoia. Increased heartbeat. Dry mouth. Sweating. Shortness of breath. Lightheadedness. The feeling of hopelessness. Because many of you survived some horrific events, your brain chemistry has physically become altered. Which is why you continue to be afraid all of the time. Your mind still believes it is in danger, and it keeps pumping chemicals into your body. “

“So you’re going to test our blood for these these these chemicals,” Dr. Belgium said, “then scare us, and test our blood again. And then am I to assume you’ll then try to block the fear somehow?”

“All in good time, Doctor. All in good time.”

“So why are Mr. Wellington and I here?” Pang asked.

“Every good experiment needs controls,” Forenzi said. “Your skepticism will provide a baseline metusamine level.”

“Metusamine?” Belgium said. “Metus is latin for fear. So metusamine—”

“Metusamine is the neurotransmitter I isolated that is responsible for the fear response. Correct, Dr. Belgium. And I’m synthesizing the transporter protein—”

“Which will terminate effects of of of metusamine!” Belgium yelled, obviously excited. “How close are you to synthesis?”

“I’ve been able to induce fearlessness in a primate, a Panamanian night monkey.”

“I’d be honored and excited to go over your data.”

“In time, Doctor.”

“And will we be able to try this for ourselves?” Mal asked. A fear-free life was a gift almost too valuable to fathom. To be able to sleep well again, to live without the constant paranoia. A drug like that would be a miracle.

“Very soon. And your presence here, Mr. Dieter, will help speed the process.”

Deb reached over, touched Mal on the arm. He looked at his wife and saw she was teary eyed. He realized he was as well.

“So let us finish our meals,” Dr. Forenzi said, raising his wine glass, “and then begin the process of scaring the hell out of you fine people.”

Everyone toasted. Everyone seemed excited, except for the cop, whose face remained neutral. Mal said to his wife, “Maybe you were right, honey. Maybe this trip was the answer to our prayers.”

“I love you, Mal.”

“I love you, too.”

They shared a quick kiss, and Mal went back to his steak. The cop, Tom, looked over at him, and his calm expression was replaced by something else.

Concern.

Did Tom know something the rest of them didn’t?

Mal’s relief evaporated, and the uneasiness returned.

After dinner, he’d confront the Detective, pick his brain.

Maybe this really was as it seemed, a million bucks and a cure.

But maybe, just maybe, Forenzi was playing them all.

Like fattening up the turkeys before Thanksgiving dinner.

Frank

Dr. Frank Belgium walked up to the second floor with Sara and marveled at the curve balls life threw.

A few days ago he’d been hating his job, and his life. He’d been lonely, depressed, and living in constant fear.

Now he was next to a wonderful woman and actually daring to think about the future for the first time.

Belgium wasn’t prone to daydreaming. Others would consider him a fatalist, but to Belgium that meant a realist who truly knew how bad things were. But there, in Butler House, Belgium indulged in a mini-fantasy where he and Sara and Jack had a house somewhere. They were playing a game of Monopoly, which he used to love as a kid. He saw himself land on Boardwalk with a hotel and start laughing, and his new family laughed along with him, and there was the scent of baked apples coming from the pie cooling on the windowsill. He and Sara took Forenzi’s metusamine pills, and neither were afraid anymore. Life wasn’t something you endured. It was something you appreciated.

A ridiculous notion, of course. But the idea of it pleased him, and he clutched it to his being like a life line.

“Here’s your room.”

Belgium snapped out of his reverie and saw one of the men in suits had opened a door for him.

“You’re the next door over,” the man told Sara. She smiled shyly at Frank, and followed him a few meters down the hall.

“See you in a bit, Frank,” Sara said.

Frank nodded, and watched her disappear through the door. Frank went inside his, closed the door behind him, and took a look around.

A bed, some old furniture, and some drapes replete with cobwebs, none of which would have been out of place in Dracula’s castle. No bathroom.

Belgium found his suitcase next to the dresser. He considered changing into a fresh shirt, but figured it would be wrinkled, and he hadn’t packed a travel iron.

Maybe he could ask Sara if she had one. Maybe that would be a good excuse to go to her room, because even though they’d only been apart for less than a minute, he missed her already.

Frank went back to the door and opened it—

—Sara was already standing there.

“I wanted to do this in case we don’t have a chance later,” she said.

And then Sara’s arms were around Frank’s neck and her lips were against his.

Belgium was so surprised he couldn’t move. He just stood there, not knowing where to put his hands, or how to move his mouth. He hadn’t kissed a woman in so long he’d forgotten how.

Would she figure out how bad he was at this?

Did his breath stink?

What if he used too much saliva? Or if they bumped their teeth together?

What was he supposed to say when the kiss ended?

But Frank’s doubts quickly began to vanish as he lost himself in the sensation. Sara was tender, persistent, and she pressed her body closer to his, and when he touched her waist she sighed, and when his tongue touched hers it felt like an electric shock, making Frank moan in his throat.

She finally broke the kiss and looked at him, her pupils so big, a slight blush in her cheeks, and Belgium had to reach out and run a finger along her neck, just to prove she was real.

“I like you, Frank.”

“I like you, too.”

She gave him another kiss—just a peck on the cheek—and walked off, back to her room, leaving Frank to wonder that maybe his ridiculous little daydream wasn’t that ridiculous after all.

Sara

Sara chewed her lower lip as she pulled a sweater on over her head.

She could still taste Frank.

In the past, Sara never would have been so brazen. Kissing was an intimate act, and all she had been intimate with lately was a bottle of booze. But she’d never felt such an immediate chemistry before. Part of it was the obvious fact that he was such a nice guy. But it went deeper. Something about being with Frank gave her hope.

And she needed some hope in her life.

Living without Jack was a constant reminder what a failure she was. As a mother. As a human being. The alcohol amplified this feeling, but without the liquor the horrors of Rock Island kept haunting her.

While it would be amazing to take a pill and not have nightmares, or panic attacks, Sara was a lot more skeptical about it than the others seemed to be. She didn’t like Dr. Forenzi. His constant mentions of babies and children seemed less like reassurances, and more like attacks. Sara didn’t like this house, either. Even though the location was vastly different, it gave off the same vibe as Rock Island. There was something bad happening here, and she couldn’t wait to leave.

That was another reason she went to Frank’s room. Yes, she found him attractive, and yes, he gave her hope. But the most important thing of all was how she felt when she was with him. When Sara was around Frank, she no longer felt afraid.

So she threw herself at him, the desire for him to kiss her back stronger than her fear of rejection.

And he had kissed her back.

And he was pretty good at it.

She shivered, thinking about his hands on the small of her back, and then turned to the dresser mirror to fuss with her hair again.

That’s when she noticed something in the mirror. Something behind her.

The rocking chair in the corner of the room.

A brittle-looking thing, made of old wood, so dark it was almost black.

Had it just moved?

Sara stared at its reflection.

The chair remained still.

I’m seeing things.

Sara went back to finger-combing her bangs, wishing she’d packed some gel. Hindsight being 20/20, she should have also packed some make-up. A little lip gloss, and a little eyeliner would—

The rocking chair moved.

Sara watched, her breath caught in her throat, as it rocked all the way forward, held it there for a moment, and then rocked back.

Just as if someone was sitting in it.

Sara knew she needed to turn around, to look directly at it. But every muscle in her body had locked.

What was the monster that didn’t cast a reflection? A vampire? Were there others that didn’t show up in mirrors?

If I turn around and check, will I see some hideous creature in the chair, grinning at me?

A ghost?

A poltergeist?

A demon?

The chair rocked again, creaking as it did.

Turn around and look.

Just do it.

Sara closed her eyes, and through brute force of will turned on her heels to face the chair.

Now open your eyes.

But she was too afraid.

Do it!

Open your eyes!

Sara peeked.

The chair was empty.

Tom

One of the suited guards showed Tom to his room after dinner, and it was both as opulent and as creepy as Tom expected.

The bed was a large four-poster, with a crushed velvet bedcover. The dresser was heavy, Renaissance Revival, with a matching bureau. There was an iron, woodburning stove, an Oriental carpet on the wood floors, a rolltop desk, and portraits on the walls Tom recognized as Colton and Jebediah Butler. The light was dim, due to an antique lamp with a low wattage bulb and a very large tasseled shade. There were candles throughout the room, all unlit.

The room’s sole window faced west, and Tom looked out into the waving fields of cattails. The sky had gotten darker, and had taken on a reddish tinge. He checked the window clasp, but it, like the sash, had been thickly painted over.

Tom put his suitcase onto the bed and opened it up. First he checked his gun, a Sig Saur 9mm, and put in a fresh magazine. He holstered it, put on his holster, and then checked his fanny pack. Inside were three more mags, fifteen rounds each, twenty glow sticks, a tactical flashlight, a Zippo lighter, a Swiss Army Champion Plus knife, some handcuffs, and a Benchmade Mangus butterfly knife with sheath.

He strapped the Mangus sheath to his ankle, and was inventorying the first aid kit he’d packed when someone knocked at the door.

“Come in,” Tom said, facing the doorway.

It was Moni Draper. “Got a minute?”

“Sure.”

She strutted in, and Tom admired her moxie. Especially after what she’d gone through. Tom knew Moni from her association with a serial killer named Luther Kite. He’d tied her up and tortured her using an antique medical device called an artificial leech. It was used by doctors in the 1800s for bloodletting, back when it was thought that bad blood caused ailments and bleeding cured people.

Tom had encountered Kite in the past, and had done a lot of research on him. Moni has over two hundred scars on her body, where Kite had used the device on her. She’d been found nearly dead, but somehow had rebounded. And, judging by her general attitude, she’d moved on with her life.

Tom had his share of nightmares, mostly due to what had happened at Senator Stang’s mansion in Springfield. But he’d never been at the total mercy of a maniac who was excited by causing pain. He didn’t know if he’d be able to adjust like Moni seemed to. And he hoped he’d never have to find out.

“You smell bullshit,” Moni said.

“If something seems too good to be true, it usually is.”

“Stay with me.”

“Excuse me?”

“They’re going to try to scare us. Maybe the threat won’t be real. Maybe it will. Either way, I want to be with the strongest guy in the room, and that’s you.”

Tom nodded.

“We can…” Moni smiled slyly, “seal the deal if you like. I’ve done lots of cops.”

Back when Kite had done that to her, Moni was a prostitute. Apparently the attack hadn’t scared her out of the profession.

“Kind of you to offer, but I’m okay.”

“Is it because of the scars?”

“It’s because I’m in a committed relationship.”

Moni pulled her shirt down, revealing her pock-marked cleavage. “So this doesn’t disgust you?”

She jiggled a bit. Tom didn’t reply. Moni continued to pose for another five seconds before saying, “So are you disgusted or not?”

“I’m still deciding,” Tom said. “Give me a minute.”

Moni giggled, walked over, and gave Tom a friendly punch on the shoulder. “You’re okay for a pig, you know that?”

Tom wasn’t offended by her use of the word pig. If anything, it amused him. “Thanks. And I promise I’ll do my best to protect you if things get crazy.”

“I believe you. Who’s the special lady?”

“Her name is Joan. She’s a Hollywood producer.”

“She have any interest in the story of a plucky whore who survived multiple attacks by maniacs and then went on to become a millionaire?”

“I’ll ask her.”

“What’s that?” Moni pointed at a wrapped plastic disk in Tom’s kit.

“A Bolin chest seal. For sucking chest wounds.”

“Like getting stabbed in the lungs?”

“Or shot.”

She continued to point. “I know that’s a tourniquet, and that’s one of those airway breathers. What’s in that package? Celox?”

“Clotting powder. Stops bleeding quickly.”

“You came prepared. But I bet you don’t have one of these.”

Moni reached for her purse, then stopped. “Where are you from?”

“Chicago.”

“A Chicago pig has no jurisdiction in South Carolina.”

“True.”

Moni pulled out a large syringe and held it up, triumphantly.

“What is that?” Tom asked, feeling like he already knew.

“Heroin. Enough to make a charging bull OD. I didn’t think I could get a gun through TSA because I’d get into trouble, so I brought this to protect myself.”

“Instead of a gun you brought a lethal dose of heroin,” Tom said. “You don’t think if you got caught with that, you’d be in more trouble?”

Moni’s eyebrows crinkled and her lips pursed. “When you say it like that, it sounds like a bad idea.”

“Am I interrupting?”

They looked at the open door and saw Mal, the sports reporter missing a hand.

“The more the merrier,” Moni said, waving him in.

“Forenzi wants us to line up for our physicals, but I just wanted a moment of your time, Detective. Are you both… busy?”

“I’m just showing the pig my heroin,” Moni said.

Mal frowned. “I could come back…”

“How can I help you, Mr. Deiter?” Tom asked.

“At dinner. You didn’t seem excited about Forenzi’s experiment. You seemed like you knew something no one else did.”

Both Mal and Moni stared at Tom. He wondered what to do, but strangely he felt comfortable around them, in the same way he felt comfortable around Frank and Sara.

In that moment, he decided the benefits of telling them outweighed keeping it a secret.

“My partner, Roy Lewis, came to this house last week, supposedly doing the same thing we’re doing tonight. He never came back.”

Tom watched Mal’s frown deepen. “Shit.”

“You look so sad,” Moni told him. She offered the syringe. “Need a little pick me up?”

“Moni,” Tom kept his voice even, “can you please put away the heroin? And Mal, I don’t know what happened to Roy, so I can’t cry foul play yet. Maybe Forenzi is legit, and this will all be smooth sailing.”

“But you don’t believe that.”

“No. I don’t.” Tom felt like he was telling a child there was no Santa Claus.

Moni put her hand on Mal’s neck. “Buck up, little soldier. Would a little three-way action with me and your wife make you feel better?”

Mal choked out a laugh. “You know, it probably would.”

“Is she into chicks?”

He lost his mirth again. “No.”

“Too bad. Well, maybe some figging will take your mind off things.”

“What’s figging?” Mal asked.

“It’s when you take a—”

“Mal?” His wife, Deb, stuck her head into the room. “Everything okay?”

“He’s moody,” Moni explained, “so I offered him smack and a three way.”

Tom decided it was time to take some control of the situation. “I don’t know how this is all going to play out tonight, but I think we all need to stick together, and watch out for each other. Did anyone bring weapons?” He looked pointedly at Moni, who was waving her hand. “Weapons other than narcotics?”

“I packed a .38 in our suitcase,” Mal said.

“Extra rounds?”

Mal shook his head. “Just the five in the cylinder.”

“Are you a good shot?”

“I’m so-so. Deb is better.”

Tom took out his Sig, removed the magazine, and pulled back the slide to make sure the barrel was clear. Then he did a quick explanation of how to load, how to use the decocker, and what double action meant. As he was passing his gun around, one of the suited guards knocked on the door frame.

“We’re ready for you.”

Tom took his Sig back, tucked it into the holster, and followed the others into the hallway. They’d been given rooms on the second floor, all in a row, and there was an ornate wooden railing that overlooked the great room. As they headed for the stairs, they passed a marble statue of a cupid on a pedestal. Tom did a double-take, then went back for a closer look.

In the baby’s mouth were sharp fangs.

Moni, who was behind him, said, “Wouldn’t want to breastfeed that little bastard. And look at the wings.”

At first glance, they seemed like typical, feathered cherub wings. But the individual feathers weren’t feathers—they were tiny daggers.

“Dr. Madison is waiting.”

Tom turned, startled, and was surprised to see yet another guard in a gray suit standing next to him. That made five he’d seen so far. Why did Forenzi need so many guards? To protect him from ghosts? And how had he managed to sneak up on Tom? Like the others, this guard was tall, muscular, and wearing military boots. But he hadn’t made a sound during his approach.

“What branch of the military were you in?” Tom asked.

The man’s face remained blank, and he didn’t answer.

“Do you work for the government, or for Forenzi directly?”

“Please move along,” the guard said.

Tom shrugged, and he followed Moni and the others down the stairs, across the great room, and to a hallway lined with drab paintings depicting plantation life. They looked old, paint peeling and a decade’s worth of grime on them. Slaves in the field, picking tobacco. Blackjack Reedy astride a horse, whip in hand. An endless field of cattails, stretching off into the horizon. Everyone had stopped next to a closed door, and Tom assumed it was the queue for the examination room. But he quickly figured out the group had huddled around another painting, this one of Butler House.

It was massive, perhaps a meter tall and twice as wide, in an ornate frame and protected behind some non-reflective glass. The picture depicted the house in the 1800s, when it was still new, and the fields were filled with cotton. Tom didn’t understand the interest until Frank pointed to a figure in one of the windows.

It was a woman, her hair tied back, a pensive look on her face. Tom squinted at it, then turned to Sara, who had gone ashen.

The woman in the painting was a dead-ringer for her.

Tom moved in closer, checking the figures in the other windows.

He saw Frank’s face peering out between half-closed shutters on the second floor.

Deb, opening the front door to the house. Mal in the shadows behind her.

Moni’s face, complete with her pock marks.

Wellington, in the cotton field with a scythe.

Two people in a horse-drawn buggy, approaching the house. Pang and Aabir.

Tom looked for himself, dreading the search, holding his breath.

“You’re here,” Belgium said, pointing to the side of the house.

Tom didn’t understand what he was seeing. It was definitely his face, lying sideways on the ground, but his body was obscured by scrub brush.

“And over here,” Belgium continued, moving his finger.

Then Tom understood.

His body wasn’t in the bushes. His body was sitting against the house, holding a knife, his shirt drenched with blood.

Tom had apparently cut off his own head, and it had rolled away.

Deb

Mal was in much better spirits since Dr. Forenzi’s talk at supper, which was just in time for Deb’s mood to take a nose dive.

They passed co-dependency back and forth like two hobos sharing a cigar. So it was Deb’s turn to feel awful, and Mal’s to buoy her up.

But he’d gone out to ask the cop some questions, leaving Deb alone in her room.

Which was when a painting in the bedroom fell off the wall.

It scared the shit out of her, and when she went to look for him she found a convention of sorts in Tom’s room.

Now, first in line to be examined, she still hadn’t had the chance to tell Mal what had happened. The painting—a ghastly picture of a brooding southern gentlemen standing calmly in the middle of a storm—had dropped off the wall just as she was wiping the sweat off her stumps.

It could have been a coincidence. Or it could have been supernatural.

What was behind it didn’t matter. What mattered was Mal hadn’t been there for her, when she’d been there for him since the airport in Pittsburgh.

It wasn’t fair. So now she was coping with resentment as well as fear, and having to go in first made Deb even more on edge. Add in seeing herself on the hallway painting, and Deb wanted to either cry, rip all her hair out, or both.

“Tom’s partner disappeared here last week,” Mal said, whispering over Deb’s shoulder.

Deb sensed the worry in her husband’s voice. But she was worried, too. She needed him to be strong for a while. The fact that he wasn’t made her angry as well as scared.

“Deb, did you hear me?”

She turned around so fast that she lost her balance, which for Deb was about the most humiliating thing she could do. That Mal had to quickly reach out and steady her made it even worse.

“Leave me alone,” she said, teeth clenched and trying to pull away.

He recoiled like he’d just seen a snake. “Deb? What’s wrong?”

“It isn’t all about you, Mal. I’m hurting, too. I need support just like you do.”

“Deb, I—”

“I don’t need this right now.”

The door to the examination room opened, and a male voice from inside said, “Come in.”

Deb began to enter, but Mal held her back.

“Let go, Mal.”

“Let’s talk about this. We can let someone else cut ahead.”

“Let. Go.”

“At least let me go first so I can tell you what to expect. I know you hate doctors. Let me—”

Deb pulled away, wobbled into the room, and slammed the door behind her.

She immediately regretted her decision.

The exam room looked like it jumped off a postcard from the 1800s. The examination table was made of wood, with a cracked leather cushion, and metal arm rests with buckled straps. A dusty apothecary shelf, filled with old glass bottles, took up most of the left wall. Along the right wall were a desk, a water basin, and a shelf of moldering, leather-bound books. On the desk was some sort kind of organ—a human lung maybe—floating in a specimen jar of gray liquid.

“Take a seat.”

The doctor still hadn’t turned around. Her husband had been right; she was afraid of going to the doctor. She’d seen too many in her lifetime, and they always hurt her in some way.

Deb considered walking back out, letting Mal go first. But stubbornness won out over nerves and she went to the antique examination table and sat down.

“Name?” the doctor asked. He was filling out something on a clip board.

“Deborah Dieter.”

Deb looked at the old medical cart next to the table. On it were filthy old medical tools. A bone saw with crusted brown flecks. Pointy forceps. A large, curved scalpel. A jagged pair of oversized snippers. A hand drill that seemed more suited to a woodworker than a doctor. Rusty trocars. A rough-edged metal speculum that was open wider that a human being could accommodate.

Deb could feel her mouth go dry and her heart rate kick up. Getting an exam was bad enough. Getting an exam from some quack stuck in the nineteenth century was much worse.

Of course it’s much worse.

That’s the point.

Deb closed her eyes and slowed down her breathing, controlling her fear. This had to be part of Forenzi’s experiment. To try and scare her. What could be scarier than a collection of barbaric surgical implements from the past?

After ten seconds or so, Deb was able to reign in her panic. Then she opened her eyes and found herself face-to-face with—

Oh my god.

She recognized this so-called doctor. He was the hotel clerk who sent her to the Rushmore Inn. The same pale, pasty face. The same crooked toupee.

But he’s still in prison!

Isn’t he?

“I’m going to take some of your blood, Mrs. Dieter.” His breath smelled like sour milk.

“I need to…” Deb said weakly. “Are… are you…?”

“I’m Dr. Madison. I assist Dr. Forenzi.”

He was tugging on some rubber gloves, and gave Deb a crooked smile.

Is this the guy? Or does he just look like the guy, and my imagination is doing the rest?

Deb sometimes thought she saw people she knew in crowds, only to look closer and realize they just resembled the people she knew. Her mind filled in the blanks, jumped to conclusions. It happened to everyone.

Is it happening to me now?

“Why, Mrs. Dieter. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” He opened up a plastic package, taking out a long needle attached to a clear tube.

Maybe this isn’t the guy. Maybe Forenzi hired him because he looked like the man Deb knew.

To scare her.

After all, this is a fear study.

“You… remind me of someone.”

“I get that a lot. George Clooney, right?”

More like Boris Karloff.

“Please put your arm on the armrest, Mrs. Dieter. I’m going to strap it down so you keep still.”

He buckled a strap around her wrist.

“So, are you from around here, Doctor?”

“Oh, no. I’m from West Virginia.”

Where the Rushmore was.

“Been here a while?”

“Only recently. For the past few years I’ve been… busy.”

“Busy doing what?”

He smiled again. “Just hold still, Mrs. Dieter. This will only pinch for a moment.”

The needle was jammed into her forearm. The agony was immediate.

Then he began to move it from side to side.

“Where is that vein? I can never find it.”

Deb ground her teeth, locking her jaw. The doctor wiggled it, going deeper, so deep Deb was sure he’d hit bone.

The pain was bad. But the anxiety was nuclear.

Deb shut her eyes again, begging the universe for it to stop.

“You have such tiny veins. I may have to get a smaller needle.”

Yes! Please please please do that!

Her whole world had been reduced to that needle in her flesh, probing, twisting, poking left and right like she was being tenderized instead of giving blood.

“Maybe I should try the other arm.”

No!

“Yes, I think that’ll I have to… ahh, there it is.”

Deb chanced a look and saw him attach a vacuum vial to the end of the tube, and it began to fill with blood.

“Was that so awful, Mrs. Dieter?”

Deb’s hair was stuck to her head from sweating. She blew out a deep breath, and pumped her fist to make the blood go faster.

“Looking good, Mrs. Dieter. Looking… oh, wait. We’re slowing down.”

He flicked the vial with a fingernail, which tugged on the needle and caused Deb a spike of pain.

“I believe your vein has collapsed.” He roughly grabbed the needle, then pulled it out.

“Do we have enough blood?” Deb whispered.

He shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”

“So…?”

“So I guess we’ll have to try that other arm after all.”

Before Deb could object, the doctor was pinning down her other wrist and buckling it to the armrest.

She was trapped.

“What are you doing?”

“You recognized me. From the hotel. I can see it in your eyes. Don’t you lie to me, girl.”

Deb immediately began to thrash and yell, but the moment she opened her mouth, the man waved his hand over her face and Deb could no longer make a sound. It felt like something foul had crawled inside her throat and was choking her from the inside out, even though she was still able to breathe. Deb screamed, loud as she could, but it only came out as a hiss of air. She tried to kick him, but he caught her left prosthetic and pressed the vacuum release, letting it drop to the floor. He did the same with the left one.

“Ya know my name is Franklin.” His voice was getting deeper, the southern accent more pronounced. “Ya know I’m very angry about what y’all did at the Rushmore.”

Deb pulled on her arms as hard as she could, until her elbows felt like they were going to pop. But old as the examination table was, it was built solid.

She was trapped.

Franklin strolled over to the equipment cart. He ran his hand over the antique medical tools, his fingers caressing the rusty speculum.

“Ya know I’m angry about going to prison. I’m really, really angry about that, girl. Do ya know why?”

He picked up the hand drill.

“I’ll tell ya why.”

Deb was growing light headed from her attempts at screaming. She tried to push Franklin away with her stumps, but he simply moved to the side of the table.

Then he placed the drill bit on Deb’s thigh, pressing down hard.

“Because,” he whispered to her, “one year ago today, I died in prison.”

He reached his hand down the front of his pants—

—and pulled out a handful of something, throwing it in Deb’s face.

At first, she thought it was rice.

Then the rice began to wiggle.

Maggots.

Franklin put both hands on the drill.

“I don’t like being dead, girl. The spirit world is all fucked up. So I’m going to hurt ya. I’m going to hurt ya so bad. And then I’m going to hurt that husband of yours even worse.”

Just as he began to turn, the back door to the examination room began to slowly open.

Then the lights flickered and went out.

Deb screamed in the blackness, making no more noise than a leaky tire.

A moment later, the lights came back on, just as the drill clattered to the floor.

Deb saw a man in a lab coat standing in front of her.

“I’m Dr. Madison,” he said. “What in God’s name has happened to you?”

Deb tried to talk, but she had no voice. she tried to point with her chin where Franklin was standing.

But Franklin wasn’t there.

Franklin had disappeared.

Mal

When the door opened, and he saw Deb crying and hysterical, something in Mal snapped. He stormed into the exam room, demanding answers from the doctor, listening to his wife try to talk but unable to.

Someone—Tom—finally figured out that she couldn’t speak, and Dr. Madison gave Deb a pen and some paper to relate her story.

Deb’s handwriting was erratic, and didn’t make much sense, but the part that stuck out the most was the word she wrote and circled several times.

GHOST

“So he bound your arms, tried to take blood, then threatened you with the drill?” Tom asked.

Deb nodded. Mal felt sick.

“And you say it was a man named Franklin? Someone you’d met before?”

Another nod.

“He’s in prison,” Mal said. “But he could have gotten out.”

Deb beckoned for the paper and wrote “Franklin said he died in prison.”

“That’s easy enough to check,” Tom said. Then he pointed to the floor. “So is this drill. My guess is that ghosts don’t leave fingerprints.”

Deb shook her head and wrote “gloves”.

“Careful ghost.” Tom looked at Madison. “And you’re sure no one went past you, Doctor?”

“Positive. I was standing in the doorway the whole time. And…”

The doctor’s face pinched.

“And?”

“When I came in here, before the lights went out, I saw Mrs. Dieter. But… I didn’t see anyone else.” He turned to Deb, looking pained. “I’m sorry, but you were alone in here, dear.”

Mal wanted to hit somebody. “This qualifies as assault, right Detective?”

“Absolutely.”

Mal pulled a cell phone from his pocket. “I’m calling the police.”

By now, everyone was in the exam room, huddling around Deb. Moni was helping her put her legs back on, and Dr. Madison was peering down his wife’s throat with a lighted opthalmoscope.

“Your vocal chords are swollen, but I don’t see any damage. How did you lose your voice?”

Deb shook her head and mouthed “I don’t know.”

Mal was walking around the office, waving his cell phone around like it was a talisman to ward off evil spirits. “Goddammit, no signal. Anyone else have a cell phone?”

Tom checked his. “No bars.”

“Doctor, where’s the phone in this place?”

Dr. Madison shrugged. “There aren’t any phones at Butler House. No electricity either, except what’s powered by the gas generators. No Internet. We’re completely cut off from the grid here.”

“This is insane,” Mal said. He turned to his wife, who was still shaking from her ordeal. “We’re leaving, Deb. Right now.”

But rather than get the expected nod, Mal watched in amazement as Deb shook her head.

“Honey, you were attacked!”

“If it was a ghost,” Deb said, her hoarse voice barely a whisper, “he went away. If it was a trick to scare me, that’s the point of this experiment.”

She reached out, held Mal’s hand. He gripped it tight.

“Let’s stay,” she said.

Moni grinned. “I’m with you, girlfriend. And if the ghost comes back, we kick his Casper ass.”

Mr. Wellington was feeling the walls. “I can’t find any secret passages or trap doors or mirrors. But any magician worth his salt can do a disappearing act. This didn’t have to be a ghost. There could be a rational explanation for all of this.”

Pang was setting up his spirit hunting equipment. Frank and Sara were holding hands in the corner of the room. Aabir had her eyes closed and was swaying where she stood.

“So much sorrow in the room,” the medium said. “So much misery. And something else. A strong presence. An evil presence. Hatred. Toward you, Deb. Toward your husband. Something to do with West Virginia. Many people died there.” She opened her eyes. “Deborah, can I touch your hand?”

Deb let go of Mal and reached for the psychic. When Aabir touched her, she gasped.

“So much pain in your past, Deborah. So many scars. Much tragedy. But much bravery, too.” Aabir’s eyelids fluttered. “A bed and breakfast. The Rushmore Inn. I see misshapen, deformed people. They’re after you. They want something from you. You’re in a room. In bed. Someone is under the bed.”

Deb’s eyes got wide, and she tried to pull her hand back. But Aabir didn’t let go.

“I see a mountain lion.”

“Enough.” Mal pulled the medium away, but then Aabir clasped his arm.

“The ghost who did this to your wife. He has a brother named Jimmy. Jimmy is the one who cut off your hand.”

Mal tried to shake her off, but the woman’s grip was like iron.

“Jimmy is here, in this house. He’s followed you here.”

Mal’s sphincter clenched. She was relating the worst thing that ever happened to him. The cause of his nightmares.

Aabir’s voice got low, so she sounded like a man.

“Maaaaaal…. I waaaaant your other hand…”

Mal was rooted there, terrified.

“Holy shit, bro!” Pang had some electronic gizmo pointed at Aabir. “The EMF is off the scale! I’ve never seen anything like this!”

“I WAAAANT YOOOOUUUUR HAAAAAAND!”

Mal shoved her away, and Aabir collapsed to the floor. Dr. Madison and Moni knelt next to her, and Pang was wide-eyed, snapping pictures with a digital camera.

“Will you fucking look at this!” Pan declared. He held out the viewfinder for Mal to see.

In the picture, Aabir was glowing like she was on fire.

Tom

Tom was on edge.

He still hadn’t talked to Forenzi about Roy, and the whole examination room incident with Deb left a bad taste. Tom had interviewed enough victims to know Deb was one.

But what was she a victim of?

Everyone had moved into the great room. Aabir slumped in her lounge chair, looking like an inflatable float with half the air leaked out. Pang was hunched over a coffee table and typing something in his laptop, his face beaming. Mal and Deb were sitting on a sofa. Deb looked like a zombie, zoned out and slack. Mal was tapping his foot rapidly. Moni was near the front doors, whispering something to Wellington. Frank and Sara were on a loveseat, Frank’s arm around her.

Despite Mal objecting, Dr. Madison had begun taking blood samples from everyone, going person to person, putting the vials into a metal case. He was also fitting everyone with a battery powered monitor, which recorded, among other things, electrical activity in the brain, heart activity, pulse, blood pressure, and calories burned. The device clipped to the belt, and worked wirelessly with ten electrode pads stuck to the skin in various locations, including the chest, wrists, neck, and temples.

“I’m scared, Frank,” Sara said to him.

“I’m scared, too.” Frank patted Sara’s leg. “But keep remembering that we’re supposed to be scared. That’s the point of the experiment. All of this could be intentional, set up by Dr. Forenzi.”

“Where is Dr. Forenzi?” Tom asked Dr. Madison as he was labeling a vial with marker.

“Hmm? In his lab, I suppose.” The doctor seemed preoccupied with his task and didn’t bother to face the cop.

“I need to talk to him.”

“I’ll tell him as soon as I finish up here.”

“Now.”

“I understand your urgency, Detective. Especially after what we all saw. But you have to understand, things like that happen in Butler House all the time. Dr. Forenzi has strict instructions not to be disturbed while he’s in his laboratory. And even if I wanted to disturb him, the doors are steel and locked all the time. I’ve never even been in there. If he doesn’t want to come out, no one can make him.”

Tom wondered if he should push, but he still had all night to force the issue. Moni was right—he had no jurisdiction here. But he did have a gun, and a lot of questions, and by tomorrow he would be damn sure he got the answers he sought.

“These readings are mind-blowing.” Pang was still staring at his laptop screen. “The electromagnetic field around Aabir surged like I was scanning a high tension power line. I wish I’d had my remote thermometer on. Did anyone notice a temperature change?”

No one answered.

“Okay okay okay.” Belgium cleared his throat. “Besides the painting in the hallway with all of us in it, and what happened in the examination room, has anyone else witnessed anything unusual since arriving at Butler House?”

Sara spoke up. “In my room. A rocking chair. It was rocking by itself.”

“Was there any explanation for it?” Belgium asked, obviously concerned.

“No. No window open. I wasn’t anywhere near it. And when I say it was rocking, I don’t mean a little bit. It seemed like someone was in it.”

Belgium shivered. “Anyone else?”

“There was a cold spot in my room,” Pang said. “Ten degrees cooler. Celsius, bro. But it went away before I could record it, so I don’t have any proof.”

“Tom?”

Tom shook his head.

“Mal?”

“What? No.”

Deb mouthed something.

“What, hon?” Mal asked, putting his arm around her.

“Painting in our room.” Deb’s voice was scratchy, but audible. “Fell off the wall.”

“Aabir,” Belgium pressed, “have you noticed anything?”

Aabir remained quiet.

“Cornelius? Moni? Have you had had had any… um… encounters, since you’re arrival?”

“Naw,” Moni said.

“Neither have I,” said the Brit.

“You told me you saw an orb,” Pang countered.

Wellington shrugged. “I saw a flash of light in the hallway, while I was walking to the loo. You called it an orb, Mr. Pang, not I.”

“What’s an orb?” Belgium asked.

“Ghost lights,” Pang said. “Also known as orbs, ignis fatuus, will-o’-the-wisp. One pervading theory is that hauntings are residual energy that lingers after a traumatic event. Another is that the energy leaks into our dimension from another one. Like in quantum theory, where a particle can be in more than one place at the same time. In this case, our world, and the afterlife.”

“I thought you were a skeptic, Mr. Pang.”

“I am, Mr. Wellington. But skepticism requires me to be aware of the hypothesis I try to debunk.”

“There are reasonable, scientific explanations for everything that has happened so far,” Wellington said.

“A ghost assaulted my wife, Mr. Wellington,” Mal said, his chin out and his voice clipped.

“It could have been a man who said he was a ghost,” Wellington said. “Or, perhaps, Mrs. Dieter might be mistaken in her account.”

Mal stood up, his fist clenched. “Are you saying she’s lying?”

“I’m not saying anything, Mr. Dieter. Only that I don’t know. I haven’t met anyone here before today, so I can’t voice for anyone’s honesty. But even if I trusted your wife was speaking what she believes to be the truth, couldn’t her account of the events be colored by her past traumas?”

“So now she’s not a liar. Now she’s insane.”

“I’m simply calling attention to the obvious. We have ample proof of liars in our society, as well as ample proof of mental dysfunction. But we don’t have any proof of spirits. So if I’m being asked to dwell on what is more likely—either supernatural activity, or lies, hoaxes, and hallucinations—I think Occam’s Razor bears me out. The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.”

“Let’s all of us take it down a notch,” Tom said. Dr. Madison was attaching a sticky pad to his neck, and the conducting gel was cold. “But I think that anyone who wants to leave Butler House, should do so.”

Moni snorted. “And give up a million bucks? You’re on crack.”

“Dr. Belgium?” Tom met his eyes. “Do you and Sara want to leave?”

They exchanged a look. “I believe we’re staying.”

“Mal and Deb?”

Mal faced his wife. “We should go, hon. We don’t need this.”

Deb shook her head.

“Deb…”

“I’m done running away,” she rasped. “Go if you want. I’m staying.”

Deb crossed her arms. Mal pursed his lips, and then he walked away, to the other side of the great room.

“Cornelius?” Tom asked.

He folded his arms across his vest. “Naturally, I’m staying. I don’t believe we have anything to fear here, except our own overactive imaginations.”

“That leaves you, Aabir. Do you want to stay, or go?”

The psychic’s lips moved, but no sound came out.

“Can you speak up?”

“Paper,” she whispered.

“Paper? Dr. Madison, can you give Aabir your clip board?”

“Certainly.” The doctor placed it in front of the psychic, and put a black marker on top.

Her face still devoid of expression, Aabir began to write. Frank moved in for a closer look.

I IS JASPER

The words were in block letters, almost childish in their scrawl. They also took up most of the page, so Dr. Madison flipped to the next one.

I WORKS THE FIELDS AT BUTLER HOUSE

“What’s she doing?” Moni asked.

“Psychography,” Pang said. “Also known as automatic writing. She’s channeling a spirit and writing what it’s telling her. Sounds like it’s the ghost of Ol’ Jasper, the slave that Colton Butler sewed two extra arms on. Shit, my EMF meter is going berserk!”

Tom remembered the Butler House website. The picture of the scarred, old slave with the extra arm.

THEY HURTS JASPER BAD

Dr. Madison flipped to a fresh page.

NOW JASPER GON’ HURT DEM BACK

Frank realized he was holding the armchair of the loveseat so tightly his knuckles were white.

I... IS...

Aabir’s eyes rolled up into the back of her head.

HERE

Aabir screamed, and collapsed onto the floor.

Then the lights went out.

The great room was very dark with the chandeliers out, but enough dusk was peeking in through the cracks in the shudders that Tom could still make out some shadows. A moment later, Pang’s camcorder light went on. Tom followed suit, digging his tactical flashlight out of his pack.

“Cornelius, you’re near the front doors.” Tom pointed the beam in his direction. “Try the light switch there.”

Wellington found the wall panel and flipped the switch, to no effect.

“Nothing. Might be the circuit breaker. Or the generator.”

Tom waved the light across the group, taking a head count. He saw Deb and Mal, Moni, Frank and Sara, Pang, Aabir—”

“What’s that sound?” Frank asked.

Everyone went quiet. Tom was acutely aware of how silent true silence actually was. Living in Chicago, silence was an anomaly. There were always sounds. Traffic, heat or air conditioning, birds, constant human noise from talking, yelling, playing music.

But this house was completely devoid of noise. The only thing Tom could liken it to was when he put on his ear muffs on the shooting range. Silence had its own sound; the steady, inaudible hum of consciousness, which made you realize how alone you really were in the universe.

And then, like a slap to the face, he heard it.

Something dragging across the wooden floor.

Like a claw. Or a—

“Machete,” Tom whispered.

A machete like Ol’ Jasper was supposed to carry.

Tom twisted his flashlight to widen the beam, and then did a slow pan across the great room, trying to locate the sound.

He saw empty chairs, the fireplace, an old piano, a wall, a hallway, a table, another hallway, another wall…

“I think it’s near me,” Wellington said in a metered tone.

Tom turned the beam on the author.

A few meters away from him was—

“Sweet Jesus Christ,” Moni whispered.

It was a black man, muscular, shirtless, shuffling across the floor in a slow, steady gate, dragging a rusty-looking machete behind him.

At first, Tom thought it was Roy.

But Roy doesn’t have four arms.

The two extra appendages sprouted from his back like angel wings, and hung, limply, over his shoulders.

“Well,” Cornelius Wellington said, “I certainly do commend the make-up artist. That’s quite a special effect. And the pure black eyes are a nice touch.”

Ol’ Jasper kept walking toward him.

Tom drew his Sig. “I’m a police officer. Drop your weapon and put your hands up.”

“All four of his hands?” Wellington asked. Tom detected the bravado, but it seemed forced.

Ol’ Jasper didn’t stop.

“Halt right now, or I will shoot.” Tom aimed his 9mm at the man’s center mass, supporting his gun hand with the flashlight.

Wellington tried to smile, but it looked more like a wince. “Oh, let him come, Detective. I’ll pull off one of those phony arms, and we’ll expose this for the farce it is.”

Ol’ Jasper got within two meters.

“Last warning.” Tom placed his finger in the trigger guard, and cocked the Sig with his thumb. “I will shoot you.”

Ol’ Jasper stopped an arm’s length away from Wellington.

Then he slowly raised the machete.

“Oh my.” Wellington giggled, but it sounded forced. “I’m so scared.”

“Get away from him, Wellington.”

“This is only a joke, Detective. I refuse to play along.”

“Drop the weapon, now!” Tom ordered.

Ol’ Jasper didn’t drop it.

Time seemed to slow down. Tom had enough time to think it through, make a gut decision, reverse the decision, then go with what his gut told him to do.

He squeezed the trigger twice, a double tap to the black man’s chest.

He felt the gun buck in his hands.

He heard the shots.

He smelled the gunpowder.

He knew he’d hit the target, dead on.

But Ol’ Jasper didn’t even flinch.

Instead, he swung the machete with vicious force, connecting with the side of Wellington’s neck.

Wellington went down like one of those buildings being demoed, collapsing in a heap right where he stood, his head flopping to the side as if on a hinge, a bright spray of arterial blood painting the front doors.

Chaos ensued.

Tom tuned out all the screaming from the others, tuned out the spectacle of Wellington’s dying body flopping and twitching on the floor like a landed fish, and emptied his magazine into Ol’ Jasper.

At least ten shots hit home.

Ol’ Jasper stood there, unaffected.

Then he looked at Tom—

—smiled wide—

—and roaches came out of his mouth.

It was the scariest thing Tom had ever seen in his life.

He ejected the empty magazine, fished out a new one, and loaded it as he backed away. Tom’s hands had begun to shake, and the beam flitted over Ol’ Jasper, catching him sporadically, until Tom somehow lost him in the darkness.

“Everyone!” Tom yelled. “Follow me! Let’s go!”

Tom hurried to the nearest hallway, alternating between lighting the way for people and trying to find Ol’ Jasper. Pang with his camcorder brought up the rear.

“Keep moving!” Tom said, covering the rear and walking sideways. He followed the group down a left turn, and into a large room.

“Dr. Belgium?” he called, keeping his gun on the doorway. Not that shooting had helped, but Tom didn’t have a better plan.

“Yes yes yes!”

“My fanny pack. I have some glow sticks. Pass them around.”

He pointed the flashlight at his pack, and Belgium fished out a handful. Tom listened for the sound of a machete scraping the floor, but all he heard was cellophane wrappers being opened. Soon the room was bathed in soft, multicolored neon light. Greens and blues and pinks.

Tom took a quick look around, discovered they were in a massive library.

“Pang, Frank, get that desk, move it over here to block the door. Mal, you got your gun?”

“Left it in my room.”

Shit. “Okay, do a head count.”

Tom peeked his head down the hall. Still no Jasper.

“Everyone say your name,” Mal said.

A bunch of people began talking at once.

“Okay, everyone shut up. Let’s try this again. I’m here, Deb is here, Tom, Frank, and Pang are here. Moni?”

“Yeah. Here. I’m here.”

“Sara?”

“Yes.”

“Dr. Madison?”

No one answered.

“Dr. Madison, are you here?”

No answer.

“Did anyone see where he went?”

Sara, bathed in pink light, said, “I think he ran down the other hallway.”

“How about Aabir?” Mal asked. “Aabir, are you here?”

“She was passed out on the table,” Pang said.

Tom ground his teeth.

Shit. One dead, and two missing.

How quickly things all went to hell.

“Tom, move over.”

Tom stepped aside, then helped Frank and Pang slide the heavy desk in front of the door.

“Are there any other doors in this room?”

General murmuring, and lights crisscrossing the space.

“I think that’s the only one,” Mal said.

Having only one entry point was a good thing. Easier to guard.

Having only one escape route was bad.

“Are there windows in this room?” Tom asked. “We need to find one, get out of here, and find the cars.”

More scrambling around.

“Got a window!” Deb croaked. Her voice was getting stronger.

People rushed over.

“Bars,” Moni said. “Thick ass metal bars.”

Mal grunted. “They’re set in concrete.”

“Okay.” Tom wasn’t sure on what to do next. He knew the right thing to do was go and look for Dr. Madison and Aabir. But he didn’t want to leave everyone alone.

Bullshit. Be honest. It isn’t about them. It’s about you. You’re afraid to go back out there.

“Everyone look around. Find something you can use as a weapon.”

“A weapon?” Pang giggled. “Why? Your gun didn’t do much good with Ol’ Jasper.”

“Did you miss, Tom?” Sara asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“You shot a whole shitload of times,” Moni said. “You sure you didn’t panic and miss?”

“I’m sure,” Tom said, but as soon as the words passed his lips he questioned them. He’d been less than five meters away, and had emptied an entire fourteen round magazine. He should have been able to hit that target with his eyes closed.

But could he have been so afraid he missed?

“Did you see those extra arms?” Pang’s voice had an edge to it.

Tom ignored him. “Does everyone have something to defend themselves with?”

Grunts and grumbling.

“If not, find something fast. I’m…” Tom swallowed. “I’m going to go look for Madison and Aabir.”

“Bad idea, Tommy boy,” Moni said. “I saw that movie. As soon as the people split up, they start dying.”

“They’ve already started dying,” Pang said. “Did you see what happened to Wellington? His head was practically cut off!”

Tom swallowed again. “I have to go check. When I come back, I’ll knock three times. Frank? Pang? Move the desk and put it back when I leave.”

“I’m going with you,” Moni said, stepping up next to him.

Tom shook his head. “You’re staying here.”

“I’m staying with the guy holding the gun. And you promised you wouldn’t leave me.”

Shit.

“Okay. You stay close, move when I tell you to. Got it?”

“Yeah.”

“Pang, Frank, move the desk.”

They shoved it back, Tom took a deep breath, held it, and opened the door, expecting Ol’ Jasper to be standing right there.

But the doorway, and the hall, were clear.

Tom stepped out, Moni close enough to be his shadow. Behind them the door slammed shut, and Tom heard the scraping of the desk along the floor.

They began to make their way back toward the great room. Slowly. Cautiously. Tom waving the gun and flashlight in front of him in a steady, sweeping motion. Left to right to left to right.

“My nana believed in spirits,” Moni whispered. “She told me some people were so wicked, the devil kicked them out of hell because he was afraid of them.”

“Shh.”

“I thought ghosts went through walls and shit. How could one hold a machete?”

“Be quiet.”

The floorboards creaked under Tom’s foot, and he winced at the sound.

“Why should I be quiet? Can ghosts hear us? Do they even have senses like we do? Maybe they can zone in on our life force or something like that.”

Tom stopped. “And maybe,” he whispered, “there are no such things as ghosts, and you’re going to give away our position.”

“Doesn’t your flashlight and my pink glow stick give away our position, too?”

She had a point. Tom resumed creeping down the hall. He was coming to the left turn, a right angle corner he couldn’t see around. He paused again, unsure of how to proceed.

“I wish I had a cross or a rosary or something,” Moni said.

“That’s for vampires.”

“Did you hear about that vampire outbreak in Colorado? At some hospital? I read it in a tabloid. They said crosses didn’t work.”

“Can you please stop talking?”

“Do you believe in bigfoot?”

“Christ, Moni, can you please—”

That’s when Tom smelled something.

BBQ?

He sniffed the air, trying to pinpoint where it was coming from.

Moni grabbed Tom’s shoulder, startling him.

“Didn’t that doctor guy talk about a ghost that smelled like burnt meat?”

Tom remembered. Sturgis Butler. A serial killer from the 1800s who killed prostitutes in satanic rituals. According to that website, he was caught and burned alive, laughing as he died.

Was the odor coming from around the corner?

Tom’s heart rate, already above normal, got even faster. Against his better judgment he began to imagine Sturgis, his flesh burned black, his charred bones poking out through his crispy skin.

“Moni, let go of me,” he said softly.

She did.

“I hear something, Tom.”

Tom listened. He heard it, too. A shuffling sound. Not a scraping, like a machete being dragged. More like someone scuffing their shoes across the floor.

Tom flashed the light into the hallway behind him.

Empty.

The shuffling drew closer.

Tom gritted his teeth and did a quick peek around the corner.

Clear.

“Okay, we’re going to run down the hallway. Keep up with me. And no matter what happens, keep silent. On three. One… two… three!”

Tom sprinted around the corner, barreling down the hallway as fast as he could, gun pointed ahead, flashlight bobbing and throwing crazy shadows. Right before he got to the great room he stopped, putting his back against the wall, sweeping his light ahead of him.

Moni stopped right behind him, again clutching his shoulder.

Tom didn’t see anyone in the great room. But the charred pork smell had become overpowering. Like he’d stuck his nose over a meat smoker.

“Aabir,” he said in a stage whisper. “Dr. Madison. Are you here?”

He focused the beam on the table where Aabir had been sitting. She was gone.

“I’m going to check the front door,” Tom said. He was close to gagging from the stench. “If it’s open, we’ll go back and get the others, find the cars. Do you want to stay here?”

Moni squeezed him.

“Is that a yes?”

Moni squeezed again, so hard it hurt.

Tom laughed softly. “I’m glad you’re finally taking this silence thing to heart.”

He turned to look at her, and his smile froze when he saw it wasn’t Moni grabbing him.

It was a man with a charred black face who smelled like burnt meat.

Frank

As a scientist, everything that had happened in the last half an hour ate away at Frank’s rational side.

As a man who once lived through unimaginable horrors, it all seemed uncomfortably familiar.

Belgium locked eyes with Sara. He saw fear there. But determination, too. Frank couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have a child taken away, especially after going through whatever hell she’d endured on Rock Island. This house had offered some hope to get Jack back, but after watching Wellington die, Frank reasoned it had been a false hope. Sara must have realized it as well.

They weren’t brought here to be part of some fear experiment.

They were brought here to be slaughtered.

But why?

Frank knew national secrets, and could be considered a security leak. Perhaps the same could be said of the others. But the FBI could have shot Frank when he answered the door back at his apartment. Why all of this preparation if the goal was just to kill them all?

Unless…

“Maybe this is all a hoax,” he said, trying the idea on for size.

“What do you mean?” Sara asked.

“Well, if this really is an experiment to study fear, we’re behaving exactly as they they they want us to.”

Mal came over, shaking his head in the pale green light of the glow stick he held. “That Cornelius Wellington was practically decapitated. And Tom shot Ol’ Jasper at least ten times.”

Belgium tapped his chin. “Are we sure?”

“That’s what we saw,” Pang chimed in.

“And we see magic all the time. Chris Angel levitating on the street. David Copperfield making the Statue of Liberty disappear.”

“How about all the blood?” Mal asked.

Belgium shrugged. “Special effects. Movie props. Maybe Wellington is even in on it. It happened after the lights were out. How can we be sure what we saw?”

“That man, in the exam room.” Deb’s voice was still raspy and faint. “Franklin. He was real.”

“Could he have been someone made up to look like Franklin? With make up? A good make-up artist can make Dustin Hoffman look a hundred years old, and Eddie Murphy look like a five hundred pound woman.”

Deb seemed unconvinced. “He was going to drill my leg.”

“But he stopped before he could. He scared you. And hurt hurt hurt you while drawing some blood. But what if all of that was scripted out? What if he wasn’t a real threat?”

“So Tom is in on it too?” Sara asked.

Frank turned up his palms. “He certainly could could could be. I suppose any of us could be. We all just met today.”

Mal rubbed his chin. “So this could still all be part of the experiment. They’re just trying to scare us, but it’s all a hoax.”

“Shouldn’t we consider that it’s at least a possibility?”

“So Ol’ Jasper was fake as well?” Sara asked. She looked so hopeful, Frank’s heart fluttered.

“Dr. Forenzi said that Colton Butler was trying to sew extra limbs on slaves. Even with today’s advancements in medical technology, that’s impossible. Isn’t it a more reasonable explanation to believe it’s fake?”

Pang shook his head. “What about Aabir? She spiked on my EMF meter. And with my full spectrum camera, she looked like she was on fire.”

Frank brushed away a drop of sweat from his forehead. “When you arrived, did you have your equipment with you the whole time?”

“Yes.”

“How about when we were eating? Did you have it with you then?”

Another drip of sweat, and Frank wiped it off and looked at his hand.

It wasn’t sweat. The smear was blackish in the glow lights.

Blood?

Was something above him dripping blood?

Frank looked up, but couldn’t see the high ceiling. He raised his glow stick up over his head—

—and saw a man staring down at him, his back pressed to the ceiling.

A smiling man, his clothing soaked with blood.

Frank yelped, and jumped to the side just as the man dropped down, landing on the floor in a crouch, then rising to his full height. He shook like a dog, spraying blood everywhere.

“An… interesting… theory… Dr… Belgium…” the man said. There was something messed up about his voice. It sounded like two or three people talking in unison. The sclera—the whites of his eyes—were black.

“It’s Jebediah Butler,” Pang squeaked, pointing his camcorder at him. “Floating on a pool of his own blood.”

Frank didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t a fighter. And even if he was, would fighting work against a supernatural being?

“Tell… me… something…” Jebediah said with his freaky voice. His hand shot out, grabbing Frank by the wrist. Frank tried to pull away, but the grip was unbelievable. “Am… I… a… hoax… or… a… real… threat?”

Then he twisted.

Frank heard his own elbow snap, and stared in disbelief as his arm was suddenly bending the wrong way.

The pain hit a moment later, and it was unreal. Frank dropped to his knees, not sure if he should vomit or faint or both. He stared up into the grinning, bloody face of Jebediah, and realized he’d been horribly wrong.

This wasn’t a trick.

They were all going to die here.

A chair splintered over Jebediah’s shoulders, courtesy of Pang. The ghost backhanded the Asian man across the room. Then he turned his attention back to Frank.

“I… shall… keep… twisting… that… arm… until… it… comes… off… like… a… turkey… leg…”

And then a hand was in Jebediah’s face.

A female hand, clutching a rosary.

Sara!

“Get away from him, you son of a bitch,” she snarled.

Jebediah’s eyes went wide. “A… crucifix…”

The ghost stuck out a black tongue—

—and began to lick it.

Long, wet, obscene strokes of the tongue, followed by quick ones. He moaned while doing so, as if in ecstasy, and then slurped the whole cross in his mouth and began to chew.

Then someone was pulling on Frank’s good arm—Mal, dragging him to the door—a mad scramble to move the desk—and Frank was in the hallway being half-carried and half-yanked—and then through another door and stairs going down—down—down—and there was actual electric light there, dim but on just the same, then Frank was laid down on the ground and unable to think about anything other than the unrelenting, throbbing, unbearable pain before unconsciousness finally took him.

Forenzi

His patient was struggling to breath. Vitals were weak. The will to live gone.

“Fight, damn you,” Forenzi said, shaking him. “You still have more to give.”

The man stared blankly at him, then his puffy eyes closed.

Forenzi made a notation on the chart, then checked the monitors for the vital signs of his volunteers. They were elevated, as expected. Heart rate, blood pressure, brain activity. Every one of them was scared.

Which, of course, was the point. And the longer they remained scared, the better the results would be.

He once again lost himself in a familiar daydream. A world without fear. Which would ultimately lead to universal peace.

The ringing phone interrupted his thoughts.

“I’m working,” he answered.

“There’s been a death.” It was Sykes.

Forenzi put his hand to his face and said, “What? A death? Who?”

“The skeptic. Wellington.”

“How did this happen?” This was the worst possible thing that could have happened.

“There have been some complications,” Sykes said.

Dear Lord, Forenzi thought. What have I done?

Tom

The thing’s face was blackened, skin peeling off in strips, glistening with grease like a broiled pork chop.

Tom’s mind flashed to the Butler House web site. Sturgis Butler, a serial killer from the 1800s who slayed prostitutes in satanic rituals. When he was caught by a mob they tied him to a tree and torched him, Sturgis supposedly laughing as he burned.

Deep set eyes bored into Tom, intelligent, malevolent, and he immediately spun away from the ghoul’s grasp and fell backward, shooting as fast as he could pull the trigger.

Five shots fired.

Five shots hit.

But his attacker didn’t even flinch.

Tom fell onto his ass, a shock of agony rippling up from his coccyx to the base of his skull. Ignoring the pain, Tom crab-walked backward, fast as he could, trying to get as much distance from the thing as possible.

Then he turned onto all fours, pressing the flashlight’s off button as his fingers clenched it, and then scrambled onto his feet and sprinted for all he was worth toward the great room.

Eight strides later he ran into something—a chair—Tom hitting hard as a football tackle. He flipped, ass over elbows, and sprawled forward, his shoulder smacking into the wood floor.

Tom somehow managed to hold onto his Sig, but the flashlight bounced out of his grasp and went skittering off into the darkness.

He paused for a moment, trying to catch his breath, trying to hear any sounds of pursuit.

There was only silence.

Tom sniffed the air, but the scorched meat smell was gone.

“Aabir?” he called in a stage whisper. “Dr. Madison?”

No one responded.

Tom holstered his gun and began to crawl, sweeping his hands out in front of him, seeking the dropped flashlight. Remembering the light sticks in his pack, he fished one out, opened the package, and gave it a quick snap and shake. He was immediately bathed in a faint blue chemiluminescence. Tom spotted the flashlight, under the grand piano, and scurried over on his hands and knees, getting beneath the instrument’s legs and snatching it up.

From the darkness, a scraping sound.

Ol’ Jasper.

Tom shoved the light stick into his pants so it couldn’t be seen, and then held his breath.

The scraping got closer.

Had he seen me? Does he know I’m hiding under the—

PLINK!

Something hit a key on the piano above him.

Tom’s bladder clenched, and he fought not to wet himself.

As a Homicide cop, Tom was familiar with fear. Every time he served a warrant, kicked in a door, made an arrest, or pursued a suspect, he relied on his training and a shitload of good fortune to make sure he didn’t get hurt.

But there wasn’t any precedent for this. Ghosts? Demons? Undead zombies?

Whatever these things were, one of them killed Wellington, and bullets didn’t do a damn thing to stop them.

All of Tom’s experience, all of his training, was worthless when a hostile hundred and fifty year old slave with four arms wanted to hack your head off.

Tom waited.

He listened.

He sweated.

Every second that passed felt like a minute.

PLINK PLINK PLINK!

Tom shuddered, holding his knees so he didn’t make noise.

Does it know I’m under here?

Is it playing with me?

Was Wellington unlucky to die so quickly?

Or was he the luckiest one here?

Tom realized, with chilling certainty, that if Roy had come to Butler House, he was dead.

And I’ll be joining him soon.

Tom slowly removed the Mangus knife from his ankle sheath. He opened it with both hands, silently, grateful he kept the hinges oiled.

Whatever these things were, they had weight and mass. They were solid.

Bullets might not work.

But that didn’t rule out stabbing it in the eyes.

Tom remained crouched. His muscles had begun to ache, to cramp. But he didn’t adjust his position. If his legs fell asleep, he’d be compromised. But that was preferable to making a sound and giving away his position.

Time ticked by.

Tom heard a scraping sound, wondered if he was imagining it, but was able to confirm that it was real, and it was getting fainter as it moved away.

Tom stayed put.

He counted to a hundred.

Then two hundred.

Rubbing the on button of his flashlight, he knew he needed to take a look around.

After another count of two hundred.

A slow count.

Several minutes passed without any strange sounds, or weird smells. Tom flicked on his beam.

He didn’t see some horrible disfigured face staring at him.

He didn’t see any threat at all.

Tom made a slow sweep with the light, and the room appeared empty.

Wellington’s body was gone.

Aabir was gone.

Dr. Madison was gone.

Fishing out his cell phone, he again searched for a signal that wasn’t there. Then he unfolded his six-foot frame from underneath the piano, and practically cried in relief as his cramped muscles stretched and circulation returned.

Now I need to find the front door. If it’s unlocked, I can grab the others and—

Then the edge of his light beam caught something. Movement, behind a love seat ten meters away. Tom turned the focus on the flashlight, amplifying it, and seeing—

Wellington?

The man was behind the loveseat, his head peeking out over the backrest, the rest of his body hidden. He looked pale and in shock. Eyes wide and vacant. Mouth hanging open. Jaw opening and closing, as if trying to speak.

“Cornelius!” Tom spoke as loudly as the conditions warranted. “I’m over here!”

Wellington’s head turned toward Tom. The guy looked positively devastated. Tom had no idea how he was even alive, let alone still able to move. But the guy needed medical attention. Fast.

“I’m coming to you,” Tom said.

Wellington nodded robotically, and then stuck out his tongue.

No—

That’s not a tongue.

It’s…

Two fingers.

Wellington has two fingers in his mouth.

As Tom was trying to comprehend why the man was eating human fingers, another possibility sprang, fully formed, into Tom’s head.

Oh my god.

Wellington isn’t chewing on fingers.

He’s…

That’s when the burned ghost of Sturgis Butler stood up from behind the love seat—

—wearing Wellington’s severed head on his hand like a puppet.

Tom’s muscles locked. His mind couldn’t comprehend the horror of what he was seeing.

Sturgis continued to manipulate Wellington’s skull as if it was a ventriloquist’s dummy, making the jaw move.

And then he made it talk.

“Hello… Tom…”

The ghost’s voice sounded like he was gargling motor oil.

“I’ve… got… my… eyes… on… you…”

Incredibly, Wellington’s eyes began to bulge. Tom didn’t understand how that could be possible—then they popped out and two black fingers wiggled through the empty sockets.

That was enough to get Tom to move. He sprinted across the great room, heading down a hallway, and then he slowed when he smelled something.

Smoke.

A cigarette? Moni?

He swept the hallway with his flashlight, finding a half-open door with a wisp of fumes coming out of it. Knife in hand, Tom cautiously approached the room.

“Moni? Is that you?”

Tom stopped before entering. He listened, and was answered with silence. Sniffing again, he realized it wasn’t a cigarette. It was more like burning hair.

Tom gave the door a small push, and it squealed on its hinges, causing hackles to rise on his forearms. The room was brighter than the hallway, an orange glow from several candles.

Black candles. On a black stone slab, which was atop an old mortician’s gurney. Next to the candles was a tarnished silver chalice with a lid on it.

It was a portable satanic altar.

Behind them, on the wall, an ornate wooden cross, over a meter tall. It had been turned upside-down. A naked figure of Jesus hung on the cross, painted in exquisite detail. His face was contorted in pain, and rivulets of blood ran from his crown of thorns and the spikes in his hands and feet. A bloody pentagram had been carved into his chest. Despite the obvious agony, the Christ figure had an obscene, blasphemous erection.

Tom wasn’t religious, but he guessed he’d walked in on the unholy ritual of the black mass. Which wasn’t something he wanted to take part in.

He was about to get the hell out of there when he noticed movement next to the altar.

Something under a black sheet.

Something human-shaped. Just sitting there.

Tom continued to stare. Maybe it hadn’t moved. Maybe the shadows from the flickering candles just made it look like—

It moved again. A shudder.

Followed by a low moan.

Tom knew how important it was to act on instinct, and every fiber of his being told him to run away. His neck was gooseflesh. His hands were shaking. His tongue was so dry that it stuck to the roof of his mouth.

Tom did not want to see what was under that sheet.

But he had to.

It could be Moni. Or someone else who needed help.

So Tom took a slow step toward it, on the balls of his feet. Quietly, as if not to wake a sleeping baby. When he got within an arm’s length, the thing under the sheet twitched.

What are you doing, Tom? Are you insane? Get out of here.

But he didn’t get out of there. Instead, he pinched the sheet with the hand that held the knife.

Okay. Here we go…

He pulled, hard.

The sheet came off.

Aabir was kneeling there, staring up at him.

Her eyes were completely black.

It scared him so badly, he fell backward, onto his ass.

She smiled. Her teeth were black as well.

“Aabir, are you… are you okay?”

It was a ludicrous thing to say. The whites of her eyes were gone, and her teeth the color of coal. She was obviously in very deep shit.

So what should he do? Try to get her out of there?

“Aabir, can you hear me? Do you understand?”

Then Tom smelled it.

Burnt meat. Getting stronger. And footsteps, from the hall outside.

Tom quickly put Aabir’s sheet back over her head, and then crawled beneath the stone altar, hiding behind the coverlet and killing his flashlight just as Sturgis walked in. Tom could see him through a break in the fabric.

The ghost approached the altar, and stopped there. Then he yanked off Aabir’s sheet.

“Ready… for… the… sacraments…”

Aabir stared up at Sturgis and nodded. Then she turned her head and stared at Tom. Her eyes were so black they resembled holes in her head.

Don’t look at me, Tom willed. You’ll give away where I am. Stop it. Please stop it.

Then Sturgis placed his hand on her head, and she stared up at him again. He had a steak knife in his hand.

“Sanguis… satanas…”

Aabir opened her mouth and stuck out her black tongue. Sturgis jammed the knife into his palm and twisted it. Blood dribbled out, into Aabir’s mouth.

Sturgis took his hands away, and Aabir once again stared at Tom. She licked her red lips.

“Corpus… satanas…”

Sturgis now had the silver chalice. Tom knew what it was. A ciborium. Used in Catholic Mass to hold Communion wafers. The priest carried it to share the Body of Christ to his Parrish.

But when Sturgis opened the ciborium, it wasn’t filled with unleavened bread.

It was filled with cockroaches.

Sturgis snatched one, and held it in two fingers as it wiggled.

Aabir stuck out her tongue.

Tom squeezed his eyes shut. He could still hear the crunching. He felt his stomach flip-flop. Between the smell of burned meat, and the sound of eating bugs, he was very close to throwing up.

Then he felt a slight tickle on his nose.

His eyes sprang open and he saw Aabir holding the cup of roaches right in front of his face.

Tom knocked it away, then rolled backward, out from under the altar. His head hit the head of the upside-down Christ, and for a moment the world went wobbly. Then he slapped at a roach crawling on his cheek—

—and dropped his flashlight.

“I… took… good… care… of… your… partner… Roy…” Sturgis croaked in that otherworldly voice as he leaned over the altar. “I… will… take… care… of… you… as… well…”

Tom slashed out with his knife, cutting Sturgis across the chest. Then he got to his feet and ran.

Out of the room.

Down the hall.

Digging the light stick out of his pants just in time to see Ol’ Jasper blocking his path.

Mal

Mal was having a hard time believing he was trapped in another psychotic nightmare fearing for his life.

Even more incredible was the sad fact that he’d volunteered for it.

After fleeing from the library, they’d somehow wound up underneath the house, in a labyrinthine maze of dirt floors and wooden support beams and low lighting supplied by old, bare, dim bulbs. Mal hadn’t ever been in an underground mine, but he assumed this was what one looked like.

Frank Belgium was on the ground, unconscious, his arm bent in such a funky angle that it hurt Mal to look at it. Sara was kneeling next to him, an expression of shock on her face. The same look graced Deb, and Mal bet his face was damn near the same.

The only one who seemed to be handling this well was Pang, who was sitting on the stairs, digging through his bag of equipment, humming something softly to himself.

“We need to fix his arm,” Sara said. She first looked at Deb, who didn’t respond, and then to Mal.

“Sara…” He tried to keep his voice from cracking. “It will take a whole team of orthopedic surgeons hours on an operating table to fix that arm.”

“It’s bent the wrong way. We need to bend it back and put it in a sling before he wakes up.”

“If we touch it, we could make it worse.”

Sara barked out a semi-hysterical laugh. “Worse? Look at it, Mal!” She pointed at Belgium’s arm, which looked like a swollen letter N. “How can that get any worse?”

Mal chewed the inside of his cheek. He wanted to run. Grab Deb, run up the stairs, make a dash for the front door, and get the fuck out of there. They’d just met Sara and Frank a few hours ago. They didn’t owe them anything.

But that was the coward in Mal talking. The part he hated. The part that had taken over his life to the point where life wasn’t good anymore. Maybe they could escape, but to what? More insomnia? More sleepless nights? More fighting with Deb because they were both so goddamn terrified all the time?

Why couldn’t he just be brave?

That was the irony, wasn’t it? The only time it was possible to be brave was when you were scared out of your mind.

“Please help him!” Sara cried.

Mal took a big breath. Blew it out. He took a last lingering look up the stairs, to potential freedom, and made his decision.

I’m done being this guy.

Time to be the man I want to be.

“Deb.”

His wife didn’t reply.

“Deb, can you help Sara hold Frank down?”

She used the wall to get down on all fours, then crawled to Frank.

“Both of you, put your bodies on top of his. Pang, can you come here?”

“Hmm?” he looked up from his tech stuff.

“They’re going to hold Frank down. We’re going to yank on his arm, try to get the bones aligned.”

“Bro, if we pull on that arm, we might pull it right off.”

“We have to try.”

Pang shrugged, set down his bag, and came over.

Mal got on his butt and placed his feet against Belgium’s ribcage. Pang sat behind Mal, straddling him like they were on a log flume ride. Mal grabbed Frank’s misshapen wrist, and Pang grabbed Mal’s arm with both hands.

“Now!”

Mal and Pang pulled, hard as they could, straightening out Frank’s wrist.

There were popping and snapping sounds, followed by Frank waking up and screaming so loud it hurt Mal’s ears.

When Mal released him, the screaming continued.

“It’s okay, Frank. It’s okay,” Sara stroked his cheeks, trying to sooth him, but Frank was lost in a world of pain.

Worse, if he kept howling like that, he was going to attract some unwanted attention.

“Try to keep him quiet, Sara.”

“Shhh, Frank. We have to keep it down.”

“Anyone have a wallet? Give him something to bite on.”

Deb patted down Frank’s pants, found a leather billfold, and crammed it in his mouth. Frank clenched down on it, still screaming in his throat. Mal didn’t know what to do. Knock him out? If only they could give him something.

Moni. She had that syringe filled with heroin.

“Did Moni have her purse when Deb was in the exam room?”

He tried to picture her when they were all in the hallway.

“No,” Sara said. “She didn’t have one.”

“She’s got some heroin in her room. And I’ve got a gun in my room.”

Deb met his eyes. “What are you saying?”

“I guess I’m saying I’m going to go get some drugs and a gun.”

“I’m going with you,” his wife said.

“No.”

“Mal—”

“It’s stairs Deb.”

Deb could do triathlons, but stairs were her nemesis.

“I got down here fine.”

“Down isn’t the same as up. You don’t do well going up.”

“I’m still coming.”

There was no way in hell he was going to let Deb go back into the godforsaken house.

“You’ll slow me down, Deb.”

Mal saw a flash of anger.

“I’m coming, Mal.”

“No, you’re not. And if I have to wrestle your legs away from you and take them with me, I’ll do it.”

“You’re being an asshole.”

“I’m being the man you deserve, Deb. Because I don’t deserve to have such a wonderful, strong, loving woman in my life.” He smiled. “But that changes right now. I’m going to do this, and when I come back we’re all going to get out of here. I love you, Deb. And I’ll die before I let you go back up there with those… those things.”

Deb’s eyes got glassy. “Mal… we’re a team.”

“Always and forever, babe. But you have to let me swagger a little.”

She nodded, tears on her cheeks, and Mal kissed her. Softly. Tenderly. With his heart as well as his lips.

Then he turned to the ghost hunter. “Pang!”

“I’m not going back into that house, bro.”

“Stay here, make sure no one comes downstairs.”

“I’m your man, bro.”

“You got an extra flashlight?”

Pang reached into his front pocket and took out his keys. There was a tiny LED flashlight on the ring, which he took off and gave to Mal.

Mal took it, then looked at his wife. A terrible, powerful thought popped into his head.

Could this be the last time I ever see her?

He rushed to her once more, taking her in his arms, and kissed her again. But this time it wasn’t soft or gentle. It was with all the passion, all the strength, of a man who loved a woman so much it practically consumed him.

When Mal broke this kiss he stared deep into her eyes and said with all the feeling he could muster. “I. Love. You.”

“Then you’d better come back to me.”

He winked. “You couldn’t keep me away.”

Then Mal headed up the stairs before he lost his resolve.

When he reached the top Mal put his ear to the door, listening for sounds from the hall. After twenty seconds of not hearing anything, he jammed the glow stick Tom had given him into the waist of his jeans, then snuck through the door. A quick press of the keychain light proved it was about as illuminating as a firefly, but the hallway seemed empty.

Mal moved quickly but carefully, heading for the great room. His original plan was to sprint up to the second floor and grab the drugs and gun. But when he saw the front doors, he realized he should check them to make sure they were open. His experience at the Rushmore Inn informed him that once the bad things started happening, it became increasingly difficult to leave. Though Mal readily admitted he suffered from paranoia—a paranoia he felt he’d earned—Butler House was beginning to feel more and more like the Rushmore. So it was with a sick, sinking feeling that he approached the exit, willing to bet everything he had that it would be locked.

Wellington’s body had been moved, but the doors and floor were still splashed with his blood. Mal did a quick look around, making sure he was alone. Then—

—he stuck the key light in his teeth—

—put his hand on the door knob—

—turned and pulled—

—and it opened easily—

—revealing a shirtless man wearing a gas mask, holding a meat cleaver.

“Hee hee hee,” the man giggled.

Mal backed away so quickly he slipped and fell. He tried to get up, but his feet couldn’t get any traction on the bloody floor. At the same time, he couldn’t look away from the Giggler, as Forenzi had called him during dinner.

A masked demon who would mutilate himself…

Which was when the Giggler raised his cleaver, and sliced a line down his scarred chest.

Mal stared, the fear so absolute he ceased to be a human being. Exactly like when he was strapped to the table at the Rushmore Inn. Mal lost his personality, his identity, and was reduced to an animal state. The evolutionary fear response, a chemical cocktail millions of years in the making, took over his body until every cell screamed fight or flight.

Acting on pure instinct, Mal chose flight, flopping onto his belly, getting his one hand underneath him, and then bicycling his feet until his toes found purchase on the hardwood floor.

And then he was off and running, beelining for the group of chairs and sofas in the middle of the great room.

Which was where he found Wellington’s body.

The dead author had been stripped naked and was sitting in a chair, his severed head placed between his legs so he was giving himself oral sex. Stuck in his neck stump were a cluster of cattails, jutting out as if in a vase.

Mal kept running, trying to remember where the stairs were. He headed for the hall to the dining room and saw it had been blocked with a sofa. So he detoured and took another corridor.

He heard a high-pitched whining sound and realized he was the one making it. So ensnared in the throes of terror, he didn’t even know where he was until the hallway he’d sprinted down abruptly ended at a closed door.

Confused, out of breath, panicked and sickened, Mal turned in a circle, trying to get his bearings. He began to backtrack, to get out of this dead-end, when he heard a CRACK! from the darkness ahead. Like someone slapping their hands together. Or…

Or a whip.

The ghost of the one-eyed slave master, Blackjack Reedy.

Mal spun back around, reaching for the doorknob, opening it and easing himself inside, then closing it behind him.

The room smelled of stale mildew. Mal used his tiny flashlight to look around, and even though the beam didn’t penetrate very far, he realized he was in the laundry room.

He saw a large sink. Some rusty, metal wash basins. Clotheslines hanging on the walls. An old fashioned washing machine with rollers. A large pile of dirty clothes. Several washboards. A shelf full of antique detergent boxes.

But something about the room was… off. Though it didn’t look like anyone had been in there in decades, Mal had the uneasy feeling he was being watched.

He got his breathing under control and listened.

The room was silent.

Mal took a few steps into the room, noticing a door on the other side. Maybe it was a closet. Or maybe it was an exit. Old houses often had a laundry room next to an outside door, to make it easier to haul wet clothing outside to dry in the sun.

Halfway into the room, Mal heard something.

A moan.

He stopped, mid-step.

Had it been a voice? The wind? Some other, harmless sound? His imagination?

Once again he played the flashlight beam around the room.

The sink, old and filthy.

Rusty basins.

The washing machine, its pulleys misaligned.

A pile of clothing with an old coat on top, its buttons glinting in the light.

The stack of washboards.

Shelves.

“Hello?” he whispered.

Immediately after speaking, Mal regretted it. Who was he talking to? And did he really want someone to answer?

Thankfully, no one replied.

Mal wasted no more time getting to the door at the end of the room. He grasped the ancient, metal door knob and turned.

Locked. He gave the door a sharp tug. It peppered him with dust, but held firm.

Squinting at the bronze doorplate, Mal saw an old-time keyhole.

Could there be a key around here?

He looked behind him, back at the shelves. If there was a key, that seemed like the place for it. Mal crept over, scanning row by row with the flashlight. On the third shelf, next to a disintegrating box of Borax soap chips, was a tarnished skeleton key.

Mal reached for it—

—and heard another moan.

He spun, again taking in the room.

But no one was there.

Basins, washboards, sink, washing machine, clothes. There wasn’t anything else.

Then the pile of clothing blinked.

Mal was so shocked he jumped backward, into the shelves, old detergent snowing on him as the pile of clothing stood up—not a pile at all, but a figure in a dirty lab coat, what Mal assumed were glinting buttons had actually been its staring eyes.

Colton Butler.

Colton moaned again. He was clutching a leather medical bag in one hand, a curved surgical saw in the other, and he advanced toward Mal.

The fear was so absolute, it paralyzed Mal, pinning him to the spot. Colton raised the saw up.

“Time… to… operate…”

His voice was all messed up, like Jebediah’s in the library, and so shocking it snapped Mal out of his catatonia and he lurched toward the locked door. Key and flashlight in the same hand, he was trembling too madly to fit it into the keyhole.

“Maaaaaaal…”

The voice was so close Mal didn’t want to turn around, fearing that Colton was right behind him. He focused on opening the door, trying to block out everything else, putting 100% of his concentration into fitting the damn key into—

Colton hit Mal in the side of the neck with something, so hard Mal saw motes of light. Then there was a ripping sound, and a spike of pain like lemon juice on a paper cut, right across Mal’s right shoulder blade.

The saw.

Mal pushed himself backward, knocking Colton away, reaching up and feeling the jagged cut in his neck.

He tried to saw my head off.

His hand now slick with blood, Mal jammed the keychain light in his teeth and went back to playing bullseye with the key.

“Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal…”

By some miracle, Mal got it in the keyhole. He twisted it, first one way, then the other, and when the bolt snicked free Mal yanked open the door and saw…

Stairs. Leading up.

He took them two at a time, breathing through his teeth as they clamped down on the flashlight, going up sixteen steps and then reaching…

A dead end.

There was no door. No room. No hallway. Just a wooden barricade.

“Maaaaaaaaaaaaaal…”

Below him, Mal heard feet begin to clomp up the steps.

Why have a stairway leading nowhere? What was the point? It made no sense.

He put his shoulder into it, pressing hard. Felt a slight bit of give.

Could this be some secret passage?

Mal held the keylight, looking for seams along the wall. On the right side, he found some old, rusty hinges.

Mal pushed again. No go.

“Maaaaaaaaaal…..”

Colton was closer, already halfway up the stairs.

Mal ran his hands along the seam, looking for a switch, a release, a button. Anything that would open this sucker up.

“Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal…”

Colton was practically on top of him. Mal’s heart was hammering so hard he could hear the lub-dub in his eardrum. A wooden splinter jammed under his fingernail, and he dropped the flashlight. Mal opened his mouth to scream in pain and frustration when his fingers brushed against a latch.

“MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL!”

Colton’s saw touched Mal’s leg just as the passageway swung outward. Mal fell forward, pulling away, then kicking the secret door closed. He looked around, pulling the glow stick from his pants, and realized he’d gotten to the guest room hallway. But it looked different in the dark, and he wasn’t sure which room was his.

The secret passage began to shake, and Mal got to his feet and ducked into the nearest bedroom. He quietly closed the door behind him, then took a minute to catch his breath. His neck throbbed, and he found a mirror on the wall and took a look.

In the green glow light, his blood appeared black. Mal probed the wound, wincing. It hurt, but wasn’t deep. Stitches probably weren’t required, but if he lived through this it would no doubt leave a jagged scar.

Squinting at his finger, he used his teeth to yank out a three inch splinter under his nail. He spat it out, and began to search the room.

The suitcase next to the bed wasn’t his, and he didn’t see any purses lying around. He checked the bureau drawers, and then the desk.

Nothing.

Mal crept to the door and put his ear to it. Then he opened it a crack, peering out. The coast seemed clear, and he quickly exited the room and entered the adjacent one.

Not his suitcase, but there was a purse on the desk. And inside…

Moni’s syringe. He pulled the purse strap over his head and shoulder.

Okay, that’s half the mission. Now to get my gun.

He remembered his room was next to Moni’s, so all he had to do was sneak into it and—

The doorknob began to turn before Mal could touch it. He quickly stuck the light stick back in his jeans and looked around for a place to hide.

The bed.

Quickly dropping to all fours, Mal scooted under it just as the door opened.

“Maaaaaaaaal… I… want… your… other… hand…”

Sara

Sara took off her sweater and tied a knot in the sleeves, trying to make a sling for Frank’s arm. He’d been groaning since Mal left, biting his wallet, his eyes welling with tears. Fishing around in her purse, Sara found a pack of tissue. She gently wiped his eyes, and then mopped some of the sweat off of his forehead.

Frank let the wallet fall from his lips, and stared hard at her.

“I’ve… been hope hope hoping…” he said, the pain straining his voice.

“Hoping for what, Frank?”

“To see see see…”

“To see?”

“You… with your… shirt off.”

He grinned, and Sara laughed. She didn’t even remember what bra she had on until she looked. It was frilly, pink, Fredrick’s of Hollywood. Somehow she’d had the foresight to wear her only good bra. If he’d seen some of her others, he probably wouldn’t have been as impressed.

“When we get out of here,” she whispered. “Maybe I’ll even let you see me without the bra.”

“I’d like that. Sara?”

“Yes, Frank?”

“I think think think my arm is broken.”

“It’s just a bad sprain,” Sara said. “Mal is going to get you something for the pain. He’ll be back soon.”

“I’m scared, Sara.”

“So am I, Frank.”

She kissed his damp forehead, then opened her purse and stared at her last two tiny bottles of Southern Comfort.

Sara needed a drink. Badly. In fact, Sara may have never needed a drink more than she did right then. Her hopes for getting her son back had been torn from her. Seeing the first decent man she’d met in—well—forever—suffer like this was heartbreaking. And the very real possibility that she was going to die soon, and die horribly, made her adrenaline spike so hard her head hurt.

She pulled out the first bottle, twisting off the cap with practiced precision, and tilted it—

—into Frank’s mouth.

He drank, then coughed. “Thanks.”

“Got one more coming.”

She opened the second, and he gulped it down.

“Got any any any orange juice?”

“Other purse.”

She moved her thigh under his head as a pillow, and blotted away more sweat.

She didn’t regret giving Frank the last of her booze.

In fact, in a strange sort of way, she felt liberated by it.

Sara looked over at Deb, who was sitting against the wall with her head in her hands, her fake legs spread out in front of her, looking strangely like skis. She seemed off in her own world. Sara then looked at Pang, and saw he had some new gizmo in his hand.

Pang glanced up at her. “I’d like to try an EVP recording.”

“What is that?” Sara asked.

“Electronic Voice Phenomenon. I ask a question, and record the response. The human ear isn’t as sensitive as a microphone. So answers could get picked up by the recorder that we wouldn’t otherwise hear. Then we can hear them in playback, with the sound boosted up.”

“Why do you want to do this?”

“Because maybe we can find out what these spirits want. I’ve investigated a lot of supposedly haunted houses. They’ve always had rational explanations or have been inconclusive. What’s happening here, now—it’s unprecedented. If we can prove that there is another plane of existence, and if we can get some answers from those who inhabit that plane, it will be the greatest scientific discovery of the century.”

Sara thought it was a bad idea. “Deb?”

Deb didn’t reply, apparently remaining a prisoner of her thoughts.

“Frank, what do you think?”

His eyelids fluttered. “I think it’s a break, not a sprain. Sprains don’t bend the wrong way.”

“Look,” Pang said, “you don’t have to do anything. Just stay quiet. This isn’t just for bad spirits. There may be some good ones around that can help us. But we won’t get that help, unless we ask for it.”

Sara sighed. She was used to life spiraling out of control despite anything she did. If Pang wanted to do this, Sara didn’t see how she’d be able to stop him.

Pang stood, holding up a silver gadget with a red blinking light on it. Keeping it at arm’s length from his face he said, “Are there any spirits here?”

Sara didn’t hear a response, but she supposed that was the point. After ten seconds, Pang sat down and pressed a button. A moment later his recorded voice was heard, louder than he’d originally spoken.

“Are there any spirits here?”

They all listened to the white noise that followed. No ghosts responded to Pang’s question.

Pang pressed another button and asked again, “Are there any spirits here?”

Sara found herself concentrating on the silence. The underground tunnel they were in had a slight echo to it, and the single bare bulb hanging from the wooden brace overhead didn’t illuminate more than a few meters into the darkness.

Pang stopped the recording and hit play again.

“Are there any spirits here?”

He turned up the volume, until the recording became almost a hiss. Then he pressed stop.

“Did you guys hear that?” Pang said, the excitement in his voice apparent.

Sara shook her head.

“At the end. It sounded like whispering.”

Pang played it again, the volume even higher. There was a faint murmuring sound, but Sara wouldn’t have called it a voice.

“Someone said yes on the recording. Did anyone else hear it?”

“Apophenia,” Frank said.

“What’s that, bro?”

“Your mind is seeking a pattern in randomness. Like seeing Jesus’s face in in in burned toast. You want to hear a voice, so you think you hear a voice.”

“You still saying spirits don’t exist? So what broke your arm, bro? Was that your mind seeking a pattern when that bleeding ghost dropped from the ceiling?”

“That,” Frank said, “is harder to dispute. But your EVP recording is nonsense.”

“Whatever, bro.” Pang pressed the record button once more. “Are there any spirits here?”

The silence ticked past.

Pang played it back.

“Are there any spirits here?”

Sara listened hard, to see if the faint murmur returned. Then the recorder let out an ear-splitting screech and wailed:

“I’M COMING DOWN THE STAIRS!”

Everyone turned to look as Jebediah Butler, dripping blood, stepped off the dark staircase and into the dim light.

Fran

Fran set down the magazine in mid-sentence and glanced over at her sleeping men.

Duncan, fifteen years old, but still young enough that there were traces in his face of the little boy he once was. And Josh, caring, strong, as close to a soul mate as could ever exist.

She closed her eyes and thought about Butler House. Having survived Safe Haven, Fran could imagine all too well what was going on right now in South Carolina. There would be blood. And death. And unimaginable horror. They would need help.

Looking at her family, Fran knew there were things worth fighting, and dying, for.

For the hundredth time she questioned whether they were doing the right thing.

And for the hundredth time, she didn’t know the answer.

Tom

Seeing Ol’ Jasper in the hall ahead, Tom did a reversal and ran back the way he came, passing Sturgis as he stuck his head out of the satanic chapel. Without his flashlight, Tom was at the mercy of his glow stick, which didn’t illuminate more than a few steps ahead of him. He bumped into a wall when the hall turned a corner, kept sprinting, and wound up in front of some double doors.

Tom tugged one open and saw he was in a large, open room. Tile floors. Ornate, crystal chandeliers. A row of chairs against one wall. A stage.

It was a ball room.

He drew his gun, keeping his knife in his left hand, and began to make his way across the dance floor. It was dark, quiet, eerie, and Tom was shaking so badly he felt he might fall over. He’d never been so frightened, and his mind kept flitting between the horror of what was happening and the horror of what he’d already gone through. He kept replaying the same terrifying scenes, over and over, and wanted to find someplace safe to hide and never come out again.

But people were counting on him. Good people. And fear be damned, Tom wasn’t in the business of letting people down. Even if he was going to die of fright in the process.

Tom reached a doorway, cleared it, spinning as something lunged at him in the darkness.

He fired, his Sig kicking, and then jumped to the side as a black object hurtled past him. Keeping a bead, he stared as it jerked to a stop and swung from the ceiling.

A body bag.

But he quickly realized something was strange. Bodies had weight as well as mass, but this swung like it couldn’t have weighed more than a few kilograms.

Tom reached for it carefully, and squeezed.

Fake. A prop, like they had in haunted houses around Halloween, where you paid ten bucks to have some teen in a mask jump out and say boo!

What was the point of that?

He followed the track on the ceiling—a metal rail that the body bag had been hanging from—and came to a breakfront.

Tom braced himself for something to pop out, and his expectations were met when a rubber zombie pushed through the cabinet doors, making a pneumatic hissing sound. Another phony prop, probably triggered by a motion sensor, like the body bag had been.

Though in a state of hyper-alertness, some rational thoughts still managed to gain traction in Tom’s fear-addled brain. He felt like he was missing some key element. They’d all been summoned here, offered money to be part of an experiment. Forenzi, though certainly odd, seemed sincere enough. He’d told them the goal was to scare them, and he’d made good on his promise.

But had Forenzi’s promise involved these silly Halloween gags? Was that his plan? And had something gone terribly wrong?

Tom was fighting for his life against an unknown enemy that apparently couldn’t be harmed. He had shot two of his attackers, and also slashed Sturgis across the chest. But that didn’t even slow them down.

Was there something supernatural going on? And if so, how did these dime-store attempts at scares mesh with what was happening elsewhere in Butler House?

Had the fake haunted house somehow become real?

He kept moving, and came upon a large, black crate in the center of the floor.

No, not a crate. A coffin. And not a real one. This was another Halloween prop, made of plywood. Tom approached, knowing exactly what was going to happen. The lid would open, and some fake monster—maybe a vampire or a mummy—was going to pop out.

Tom got within a meter of it, gun pointed forward, anticipating the obvious.

As predicted, the lid opened.

As predicted, a monster sat up in the coffin.

It wasn’t a vampire or mummy. It was some bizarre, bloody mannequin with a gas mask on. There were many gashes on its bare chest, glistening with stage blood.

“Hee hee,” went the prop.

Tom kept his Sig on it, then slowly walked past. It was creepier than the zombie in the breakfront, and the body bag on a conveyor track, but Tom was going to save his adrenaline for real threats, not fake ones.

“Hee hee hee.”

Movement, in front of Tom. He held fire as another body bag swung past on a pulley track. He watched it swing past the empty coffin, and disappear into the darkness.

Tom pressed forward, and then his fear spiked. He spun again, staring at the coffin.

The gas masked prop was gone.

Tom looked side to side, sweeping with his Sig. That prop apparently wasn’t a prop. Tom remembered Forenzi’s dinner speech and realized it was—

“Hee hee hee hee.”

The Giggler.

Now where the hell did it go?

Tom turned in a slow circle, ready to shoot anything that moved. He was so focused on what was around him that he wasn’t paying attention to where he was walking, and suddenly he lost his footing and stepped into a hole, falling onto his ass.

He tried to pull his leg free, and his calf screamed at him. Tom holstered his gun and reached into the hole in the floor.

Spikes. Digging into his skin.

“Hee hee hee hee.”

The Giggler walked out of the dark, into view. He was rubbing a large, bloody meat cleaver against his chest.

Tom drew his Sig and emptied his clip into the demon.

Nothing happened. The Giggler stood there, staring, swaying back and forth.

“Tom…”

Tom checked his other side, and saw a pink glow in the distance.

Moni. She had a pink light stick.

“Moni! Run!”

The pink light got closer.

“No, Moni! Get away! You need to get out of here!”

Moni slowly came into view. But it wasn’t Moni.

It was Aabir, holding Moni’s glow sick. Her eyes were completely black. She opened her mouth and roaches dropped out of it.

“Hee hee hee.”

The Giggler had halved the distance between them. Tom realized he wasn’t simply rubbing the meat cleaver against his bare skin. He was actually cutting himself, blood streaming out of the wounds he was making.

Tom blinked. His vision was getting blurry. His thoughts, fuzzy.

Drugged. Something in the spikes.

He stared back at Aabir. She was kneeling next to him. Tom held up his knife, pointed it at her, but he’d begun to see double.

He slashed at her, trying to keep her away, but everything started to fade.

Her hand shot out and she grabbed his wrist, easily prying the knife away.

Tom’s eyes closed, but he forced them open.

Can’t pass out. Not now…

Blackout.

And then he was in the throes of a full blown nightmare, unable to breath, drowning in some sort of slimy sea.

Tom’s eyes popped open, panic making him shake. Aabir was on top of him. She had her mouth around his nose, her wet tongue sticking up his nostril.

He pushed her away, eyelids fluttering.

Must. Stay. Awake. Must…

Blackout.

Then Tom was choking, thrashing around, coughing and spitting—

—because his mouth was filled with cockroaches.

Tom looked up, and the Giggler was pinning down his shoulders, staring down at him. Aabir had her hands down Tom’s pants, and she was jamming her fingers into his ass, feeling like she was tearing him apart.

“Hee hee hee.”

Tom screamed.

He screamed louder and harder than he ever had in his life.

Then the Giggler pulled off his gas mask, and maggots rained down on Tom, squirming in his eyes, his nose, his mouth, as he continued to scream and scream until unconsciousness finally took him.

Mal

The dust under the bed got in Mal’s eyes and the ragged gash on his neck, amplifying the pain.

He was so frightened he couldn’t breathe.

Under the dust ruffle, Mal saw Colton’s feet enter the bedroom. When he took a step, his old leather satchel clanged.

His bag of ghastly surgical instruments, still trying to conduct his insane experiments upon the living.

Mal let his breath out slow, then sucked dust into his nostrils—

Oh jesus I’m going to sneeze.

Mal clamped his hand over his mouth and nose, pinching his nostrils shut.

Please don’t please don’t please…

The urge to sneeze passed.

Colton continued to move toward the bed. His feet stopped less than half a meter from Mal’s face.

He doesn’t know I’m in here. If I keep absolutely still, he’ll go away.

Mal kept absolutely still.

Then something tugged on Mal’s foot.

Then he felt his pants cuff being raised up, baring his calf. He shook with effort as he fought not to scream.

What the hell is that?

It was small. Small and—

Hairy.

A rat? A rabid raccoon?

“Maaaaaaaaaaal,” Colton droned.

The ghost dropped the medical equipment bag, which clanged inches from Mal’s nose.