F Paul Wilson - Novel 03

by Virgin (as Mary Elizabeth Murphy) (v2. 1)

  "I'll . . . I'll need help."

  "Decker and Molinari will be on their way on the jet. We'll hangar it at LaGuardia so it will be at your disposal when you secure this relic. You've got the credit card— charge anything you need. And if you require cash, I can wire that within minutes. Spare no expense, Emilio. This is more important to me than anything else in the world. Remember that."

  "Yes, Senador," Emilio said.

  "Madre!” he muttered as he hung up. How in the world was he ever going to pull this one off?

  He shook himself. Why worry about it? As long as this thing in the church remained surrounded by a crush of people twenty-four hours a day, there was no possible way the senador could expect him or anyone else to steal it.

  VATICAN: THE LADY IS OURS!

  ROME (AP) The Vatican released a statement today claiming the so-called Manhattan Madonna as property of the Catholic Church.

  "The object was discovered on Church property and therefore must be considered Church property unless and until other ownership can be established," contended Cardinal Pasanante, spokesman for the Vatican.

  "Too much publicity attends this object already," the statement reads. "It has become the focus of devotion of hysterical proportions. This is of great concern to the Holy Father. The Church intends to investigate the many claims of miracles associated with the object, and to substantiate the object's authenticity, if possible."

  When questioned about Israel's prior claim on the Madonna, Cardinal Pasanante replied, "We are disputing that." When asked what the Church would do if the object should be proven to be the remains of the Virgin Mary and if Israel's claim to ownership is upheld, the enigmatic cardinal replied, "There are too many ifs in that question."

  THE NEW YORK POST

  IN THE PACIFIC

  15° N, 136° W

  Quantas flight 902 out of Sydney encounters a massive storm along its route to Los Angeles.

  Faced with a raging front of swirling black clouds, the pilot pushes the L-1011 to another 5,000 feet in altitude and angrily radios back to Sydney. He was told there was no weather on this flight path and here he is facing a monster.

  The reply comes that radar shows no sign of the slightest storm activity at flight 902's location.

  The pilot tells Sydney to get its radar fixed because the mother of all supercells is moving northeast along his course.

  21

  Manhattan

  Carrie turned away from the steaming stove and wiped the perspiration from her face. Hot down here. Already fall, but September was rarely a cool month in New York.

  She saw Dan sitting in the corner staring at the floor.

  "Why so glum, Father Dan?" she said.

  He looked up at her. The usual sparkle was gone from his eyes, replaced by a haunted look.

  "I don't know," he said, sighing 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's seat, but that doesn't mean we're on a runaway bus."

  "Is anybody in the driver's seat?"

  "Always."

  "I'll tell you something," he said, jerking his thumb toward the ceiling. "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 the 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."

  I've 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 Ziploc 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 C.C.U. and trembled like one of her homeless guests in the throes of DTs.

  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 child, 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 younger 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 there was 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 its 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, blond. 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 aberrant 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 finger 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 . . .

  . . . but a day hadn't passed that his memory didn't haunt her.

  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 Ziploc bag 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 fingers 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 inside 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," she said. "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 blond 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 steam 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 f
rom 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 back 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 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

  John Cardinal O'Connor has announced that the Archdiocese of New York will temporarily close St. Joseph's Church until the Diocese and Vatican officials have 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."