The Second Coming

by John Heubusch

  “Fermo o sparo!” the guard shouted.

  “Jon!” Domenika cried out. “He’s going to shoot!”

  Bondurant, his head now barely above the top of the fence, stopped his ascent. As he stared out across the growing commotion on the stage, he couldn’t believe his eyes. Twenty feet from him but impossible to reach, De Santis stood only a few feet from the boy. The new bishop’s face was now the visage of a madman. What looked at first to be a small, shiny object De Santis had pulled from his vestments quickly took shape as a knife a foot long. It glinted in the light of the sun. Gasps of astonishment flew forth from people at the front of the crowd who were close enough to see the thick blade held high. It was clear to Bondurant that if he didn’t reach his son in seconds, Christopher would die.

  Bondurant flung himself headlong over the top of the fence, hit the ground with both feet, and landed on the platform in full stride. But as he dashed toward De Santis, he was broadsided by two huge uniformed guards, who tackled him to the ground. Desperate, Bondurant called out for Christopher and wrested himself free from the grasp of the guards. From there, he made a diving leap and bounced hard onto the stage only ten feet from the deranged bishop. De Santis, his eyes filled with rage, stood over Christopher. But before Bondurant could spring toward De Santis, who held the menacing blade aloft, he saw something incredible out of the corner of his eye.

  It was Parenti. The tiny priest soared across the blue sky in front of him like a bird of prey in flight. Having bounded from his chair onstage, the priest hurtled with all his might toward the child to shield him from De Santis’s blow. Parenti’s timing was amazing. The instant his body cloaked the child like a blanket to protect him, it was met with the sharp downward thrust of De Santis’s deadly blade. The knife was planted deep into Parenti’s chest.

  The razor-sharp blade, eight inches long with a tip as sharp as any stone could hone, drove like a tooth from the devil directly into the tiny priest’s heart. In just seconds, Parenti lay dead, cradled in Christopher’s arms.

  Chapter 49

  Over Italy

  The flight time from Geneva to Rome’s Fiumicino Airport aboard the private Boeing 737 was just more than one hour. The plane Meyer and the elders of the council were aboard, replete with a full bar, TV lounge, conference room, and private cabins, was one of two sleek jets the Demanian Church had purchased from a Saudi sheikh only days before. The recent overnight passing of so many of the wealthy faithful had set loose an army of lawyers headquartered in Geneva. They’d begun to secure the Demanians’ rightful share of the deceased’s estates. The sect’s projected balance sheet had dramatically improved. These fortunate developments, among others, had Meyer in an unusually good mood.

  In his lap was a copy of the International Herald Tribune. The headline that screamed across the top of the fold said it all: “Vatican in Disarray Following Child Healer Disaster—State Investigation Launched.”

  Meyer smiled as he dug into the story on the front page.

  “It seems,” he said, looking up from the newspaper in Hans Jr.’s private cabin, “the pope has not been seen for days.”

  “Hiding, I suppose,” the boy casually replied.

  Meyer listened intently as Hans Jr. spoke. The boy’s voice dropped about two octaves from his normal range. The dramatic shift in tone had become a more regular occurrence. It was eerie when the deep sound of a grown-man’s voice came from a child of no more than eight years old. Hans Jr. was engrossed in another of his handheld games. This one blared the noise of bombs that exploded as they hit their targets.

  “It says here that he’s secluded, holed up in his apartment and seeing no one,” Meyer said. “The good news is he’s obviously defeated. The bad news is the police have forced a return of the child to Bondurant. Now the boy will be tougher to find.”

  Hans Jr. smirked at Meyer’s mention of the boy. “I can find him,” Hans Jr. said. “I just need to be in the same city. The rest will take care of itself.”

  “De Santis was a disappointment,” Meyer said as he tossed his newspaper onto the seat next to him in disgust. “It says they’re charging him with two counts, manslaughter for the priest and attempted murder of the boy. I don’t know what jail they’ve thrown him into, but let the incompetent rot there forever, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “I told you before,” Hans Jr. replied, “I will find the boy.”

  “People are difficult to predict,” Meyer said. “De Santis is a bishop. Close to the pope. He had access to the boy. What better way to get at him than from the inside?”

  Hans Jr. shook his head and turned off his game. He looked angry at Meyer’s incessant interruptions. “When I healed him, you claimed this priest, De Santis, would be our messenger of death. Some messenger. Some death,” he said.

  The boy’s sarcasm wasn’t lost on Meyer. While Meyer wasn’t happy being chided by an eight-year-old, he was glad to see Hans Jr. stewing over the problem at hand. The other supposed child of the Shroud, the one called Christopher, unfortunately still walked the earth. But once they reached Rome, Meyer hoped it would be just days before the child was located and disposed of so that the rest of his plan could succeed.

  Meyer wasn’t seeking an unconditional surrender from the forlorn pope. Rather, he figured a slow and gradual capitulation to his terms that spared the pontiff further embarrassment would better serve the Demanian Church’s interests over time. Augustine had resisted several overtures from Meyer for a friendly merging of the two faiths. A secret pact he’d suggested would quietly place the Church in Rome in subservience to the Demanian faith. Meyer knew there was talk of rebellion among the worried Curia that surrounded the weakened pope. It was time to act. He was determined not to leave Rome without an agreement in hand from the pontiff that would, over a period of years, transition the Church in Rome to his care. How could the pope possibly decline? In Meyer’s mind, it was a match made in heaven.

  Later, Meyer was awoken by the flight attendant, who gently reached toward his lap to fasten his seat belt. He’d catnapped during the last few minutes of their flight.

  “We’ll be landing any minute,” the attendant said.

  Meyer looked over at Hans Jr., who’d been staring at him from across the aisle as he slept. The boy held a large knife with his name engraved across the handle, a gift from Meyer when he’d turned eight. It rested inside its scabbard. An intent look was on the boy’s face.

  “This boy they call Christopher,” Hans Jr. said. “He is not without powers, you know.”

  “If he has them, he certainly doesn’t show them. Not like you,” Meyer said.

  The boy pulled the knife from its slender case and practiced slicing it through the air. “He has them, and more,” he said. “I’ve been disrupting them when I can. Just as I’ve been giving hell to the pope as well.”

  “What are you saying, Hans?” Meyer asked.

  “I’m saying the child was weak because I made him so. But the effort makes me weak too. We have to be quick.”

  “First him, and then I approach the pope, as agreed,” Meyer said. “We’ll be as quick as we can.”

  “I cannot be near him for too long, or he will win,” Hans Jr. said.

  The boy looked to have a sense of trepidation, one Meyer had never seen in him before. Then Meyer felt the aircraft’s wheels touch down on the runway beneath them. He looked at his watch. “We’re early,” he said, and smiled.

  “Good,” Hans Jr. replied. He raised his knife high and with uncanny force slammed the blade deep into the wooden coffee table between them. “I was late for his rising once,” he said. “That was almost two thousand years ago. I won’t be late again.”

  Chapter 50

  The Vatican

  Father Parenti had lain dead inside the Vatican’s ancient basement morgue for two days before Bondurant was able to receive permission from the pope to see him. Bondurant wanted to say good-bye before the little priest was buried in the Vatican’s small cemetery set in a
corner of a courtyard beneath the long shadows of St. Peter’s Basilica. The leafy graveyard surrounded by olive trees was a place of honor reserved for very few, and the pope had specifically chosen one of the last remaining plots for Parenti to lie at rest. The priest’s grave would sit beside a modest wooden bench, a place for contemplation often frequented by dignitaries who visited the Vatican. Parenti would be remembered by many.

  Chastened by the disaster two days earlier in St. Peter’s Square, the pope had isolated himself in prayer in his private chapel within the papal apartments. After many hours of penance, as well as meetings with the commander of the Pontifical Swiss Guard, the State Polizia, and his advisers from the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith, plus a private audience with Bondurant and Domenika, Augustine had decided to release Christopher from Vatican hands. Upon reflection, it was only right, he said.

  He knew he had no choice. One of his most trusted confidants, for reasons no one understood, had obviously gone mad and nearly taken the child’s life. In the process, he’d stolen the life of another, one of the Vatican’s own. The pope had turned De Santis over to the authorities. He sat in a Roman jail awaiting judgment for his crimes. The child’s purported healing powers had proved, at least in the hands of the Church, to be nonexistent. And Bondurant and Domenika, who the pontiff knew had raised the boy as their own, were the only rightful parents.

  Domenika was inconsolable over Parenti’s death. She had no interest in joining Bondurant to see the little priest lying lifeless and so terribly alone. She remained at the hotel to pack the family’s things for their journey, while Bondurant, with Christopher by the hand, made the forlorn trek through the Vatican’s vast underground to bid farewell to their friend. They’d been provided a guide by the pope, a necessity given the arcane and twisting path of underground tunnels that wound their way to the isolated morgue. The mortuary had existed in the damp and lonely caverns beneath the city-state for centuries.

  Bondurant found their attendant a fitting escort for the excursion. He was a decrepit soul with bulging eyes who crept ahead of them in the dank and narrow underground corridors, hunched over in pain. Bondurant was vexed by the mystery of where he had seen the man before. It wasn’t until they passed briefly by a solitary bright light as they rounded a bend in the tunnels that Bondurant recognized him: Father Barsanti, the former prefect of the Vatican archives and longtime nemesis of Parenti. Christopher held his father’s hand tightly along the way. Bondurant could tell it was fear of their guide as much as the dark that troubled the boy.

  Finally, they came to a small, nondescript hallway lit by a single naked bulb. A heavy steel-gray door stood between them and their friend.

  “Christopher,” Bondurant said as he took a deep breath to lessen his own anxiety, “you can wait here if you want. You don’t have to go in.”

  “I want to,” the boy said. He pulled at the pouch slung over his shoulder and lifted the flap. Aldo’s head peered from within. “We want to say good-bye.”

  The moment Christopher revealed the tiny pup, Barsanti reared back. Bondurant remembered the late-night pursuit Barsanti had given him and Parenti through the Vatican archives years ago. Aldo had bitten the priest as he chased them and sent him tumbling toward injury and disfigurement down a steep flight of marble stairs.

  “He does not deserve this honor,” Barsanti said as he turned away and twisted the key to unlock the door to the morgue. “Very few have rested here before, and most of them were popes or saints.”

  Aldo let out a slight growl from his pouch. Bondurant grabbed Barsanti by the collar with both hands and moved him to the side as the door swung open. “Mind yourself, old man,” he said. “A martyr lies in here, and he’ll have your respect—if not in life, then in death.”

  A pale yellow light hung from overhead, dimly exposing the small room, a space barely bigger than a closet. At the far end sat four large drawers encased in the wall. Above them rested a wooden crucifix. Chiseled into the granite above the cross were three simple words: Sileo in Pacis, “Rest in Peace.”

  “Which one is he in?” Bondurant said as he turned toward Barsanti.

  “The lowest one, of course,” the priest said.

  Aldo gave out another sharp growl.

  Bondurant pulled Christopher in close to him and leaned slightly over to grasp the handle of the wooden drawer. As he pulled on the drawer and the narrow table glided open before them, a slight whoosh of cold air blew forth from the dark cavity in the wall. Bondurant was familiar with the stale, sweet odor. He knew it as the smell of death. A simple gray linen shroud rested atop Parenti, covering his body from head to toe. Bondurant paused for a moment and pressed Christopher’s face away from the sight before he pulled the fabric from the dead priest’s face. But the boy, at eye level with the body, resisted the gesture and stared stubbornly straight ahead. Bondurant could feel Christopher squeeze his hand hard once again.

  As Bondurant gently lifted the cloth from Parenti and drew it away from his body to his waist, he was relieved. The tiny priest’s face, while gray as slate, looked completely at peace. Rather than resting flat on his back, the priest lay tilted slightly toward them as they stared down. Bondurant wondered why. He reached his arm over Parenti’s body and searched behind him to determine why the priest leaned over to one side. As he moved his hand up and down Parenti’s back to determine the cause, Bondurant was suddenly filled with rage. In one powerful pull, he removed a ten-inch-long knife from the center of the poor priest’s back.

  He held it in his outstretched hand for a moment and then stared at Barsanti. “What’s the meaning of this?” he cried out. Bondurant yelled so loudly that his voice echoed off the walls. It forced Christopher to cover both his ears.

  “I don’t know where that came from,” Barsanti murmured.

  The sight of Parenti’s blood on the knife made him gag. When Bondurant recovered, he was so angry that he had the idea of plunging the knife he held deep into Barsanti’s chest. Instead, he tossed it to the floor, turned toward Parenti once more, and slowly pressed the poor priest’s shoulders flat against the table to place him more comfortably at rest.

  “Christopher,” Bondurant said, “there is—”

  “I know what you want,” the boy said. Bondurant could see tears had begun to flow down his cheeks. “I don’t know if I can.”

  “If you can what?” Bondurant asked. He was mystified at Christopher’s words.

  “Use my gift. To bring him back from the dead.” The boy started to reach out to touch Parenti but then cautiously pulled his hand away.

  Bondurant’s heart sank. “That’s not what I was going to say at all, Christopher. That’s not what we’re here for. Our dear friend is dead. We’re here to say good-bye. It’s not up to you to try to bring him back.” Bondurant had never felt more heartbroken. He knelt and used his sleeve to wipe away the boy’s tears.

  “Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t,” Christopher said. “When my head hurts, it stops working. I’m sorry.”

  “Does your head hurt now?” Bondurant asked.

  “Yes, very much,” the boy said.

  Bondurant watched as Christopher quickly reached out his hand again toward the dead priest. This time, he slowly stroked the side of Parenti’s face. He then placed his hand on Parenti’s forehead and then on his chest. Nothing happened.

  “Then we’re here to say good-bye,” Bondurant said. He reached over and gently pulled Christopher’s hand away from Parenti’s lifeless body. He was saddened by the prospect of the boy’s feeling so helpless, unable to save his best friend from the cruel finality of death when he’d been able to help so many others. Then Bondurant did something that surprised even himself. He clasped his son’s hands together. “Would you like to say a prayer? One that Mommy taught you?”

  “Yes,” Christopher said.

  But as soon as Bondurant removed his hands from his son’s, he watched the boy’s eyes suddenly grow wide. Christopher reached out his hand a
gain, but this time shoved it into Parenti’s vestment pockets, one after the other, as if in a frantic search. He reached his arm all the way down into the pocket of Parenti’s pants and, breaking into a wide smile, proudly produced a small plastic bag.

  “What’s that?” Barsanti said.

  “It’s his!” Christopher exclaimed.

  “This is the morgue. You’re not to take anything from here.” Barsanti stepped forward to approach the child and take the bag from him.

  As Christopher fumbled for the contents in the bag, Bondurant elbowed Barsanti hard to keep him at bay. He instantly recognized the bag Parenti had long had and was certain he knew what was inside.

  Christopher produced the ragged cloth, an ancient veil, and held it in front of his eyes for a moment. “He told me,” he said as he looked up at Bondurant. “He told me it can heal.”

  As Christopher pressed the veil on Parenti’s chest, directly above the spot that marked his torn heart, Aldo stuck his head out of the boy’s satchel and began to bark. Then the dog leaped from the sack onto the table where Parenti lay. He began to lightly lick the side of the dead priest’s face as though to wake him. Bondurant watched as Christopher closed his eyes and silently prayed. After a minute of quiet entreaty from all in the room but Barsanti, who wheezed with every breath, Parenti still lay cold and lifeless, perfectly at rest. Bondurant grew anxious as he watched his son begin to tear up again.

  “Time’s up,” Barsanti called out, breaking the silence. “You’ve made your peace.”

  He grabbed Bondurant by the sleeve and motioned for him to collect the boy. The dog, recognizing a retreat when he saw one, had nuzzled his way beneath the shroud. He sat motionless on top of Parenti’s chest, as he used to do when the tiny priest read books to him aloud. Christopher reached for the pup and motioned for Aldo to jump back into his traveling sack, but the dog would have none of it. Bondurant bit his lip to try to stop tears of his own. He had never seen a dog as faithful to his master and friend than the one that sat before them. Aldo’s expression wasn’t difficult for Bondurant to read. He was going nowhere. Bondurant knew the dog would rather lie with Parenti in the morgue and join the priest in the hereafter than leave his master so alone.