"No," Mr. Veilleur said with a slow shake of his head. "It is the child. From the moment of conception its powers have begun to grow. That is the wrongness you've sensed in the world for the past month or so. It is the Presence, maturing within Carol Stevens, growing stronger with each passing day."
"This sounds like Rosemary's Baby," Grace said.
Martin said, "God works in subtle and mysterious ways. Perhaps He inspired that author to write such a book; perhaps He made it a best-seller as a warning to us all!"
Grace was dubious. "God works through The New York Times best-seller list?"
"His hand is everywhere!" Martin leapt to his feet. "And even now the Antichrist is growing within the clone's wife. That explains why we sensed no diminution of the evil when the clone died."
"Stop calling him that!" Grace said, her growing resentment of Martin's callousness finally reaching the breaking point. "He was my niece's husband. He had a name. And we are responsible for his death!"
"That was an accident!"
"An accident that proved very convenient for the Presence," Mr. Veilleur said.
Martin looked shocked for a moment. He made no reply.
"I fear Mr. Veilleur may have a point," Brother Robert said. "And speaking of names, don't you have one for this Presence, as you call it?"
"Actually it's a him, and he has many names, none of which you've ever heard, so they would mean nothing to you."
"How about 'Satan'?" Brother Robert said.
"Satan? Forget Satan! Something evil is coming—you're right about that—but it's not your Satan. Something far worse is on the way, something beyond your worst nightmares. The Antichrist? If only it were! When it gets here, you'll long for your Antichrist. Because prayers won't help you. Neither will guns or bombs."
The utter conviction in Mr. Veilleur's voice drove a shaft of terror through Grace's soul.
"How… how do you know so much about him?"
Mr. Veilleur gazed out the window as a stray cloud passed across the sun.
"We've met before."
4
Bill came in, entering her hospital room like an unarmed man entering a gladiator ring. "Are you okay, Carol?"
Carol's control almost dissolved at the sight of him. She remembered this afternoon—Bill carrying her to the couch, covering her with a blanket, calling the first aid squad, and staying by her side during the ambulance ride.
"Oh, Bill!" she said, sobbing.
She sat up and lifted her arms, aching to embrace him. Her unaccountable lust of a few hours ago was gone now, gone as if it had never been. This was for friendship, from a deep, simple need for someone solid to hold, to cling to.
But Bill only grasped one of her hands and looked down at her with worried eyes. That had always been his way, it seemed—when she had needed some hands-on support after her parents were killed, he had backed off, just as he was doing now.
But who can blame him for being gun-shy after the show I put on a few hours ago?
She felt her face redden with the memory of it.
"Please, Bill," she said. "I'm so sorry about what I did to you before. I don't know what happened to me. It was like someone else had taken me over."
"It's okay," he said softly, smiling and patting her hand. "We both survived."
"But the baby almost didn't."
His hand tightened on hers. "Baby?"
"Yes! Dr. Gallen says there's every chance the baby's still okay."
"You're pregnant?"
"Four to six weeks along. Maybe that's why I acted so crazy back at the mansion. They say the hormone changes in pregnancy make some women do crazy things."
"I don't know much about that sort of thing," he said, grinning shyly. "But please don't ever do anything like that again. I know they say beware the Ides of March, but you almost gave me a heart attack!" He paused as his smile faded. "A baby—"
His voice choked off and she saw tears spring into his eyes as he worked to speak again.
Finally he managed to say, "Carol, that's wonderful!"
She shook her head and then began to cry herself, unable to hold it in any longer.
"Not so wonderful!" she said finally. "Why couldn't this have happened a year ago? It stinks! Jim's child—and he'll never see him! He wanted a child so bad and we weren't sure we could ever have one, and now we do but he's gone and the baby will be born without a father! Why does God play such rotten, dirty tricks?"
"I don't know. But maybe it's not so rotten. I mean, in a way it means that Jim is still alive, doesn't it?"
Struck suddenly by the wonderfulness of the thought, Carol slowly leaned back on the pillow and allowed herself to float on the warmth and comfort it brought.
5
Grace felt cold all over. She rubbed her hands together as she spoke.
"Then you think we played into the hands of this… this Presence when we went out to Monroe. Do you think it was influencing us? Do you think we've been tricked all along?"
"Never!" Martin cried. "How can you say such a thing! The Spirit was with us, guiding us!"
"Wait, Martin," Brother Robert said. "Let us hear Mr. Veilleur's answer. Explain, please."
"Well," Mr. Veilleur said, looking older than when he had arrived here earlier this afternoon, "there are two sides to this. I think you've all been touched by the other side, the one that would resist the Presence. The reason isn't clear yet, but I think the one who has been chosen to stand against the Presence will emerge soon."
"The way is clear enough, isn't it?" Martin said. "The baby must never be born!"
"Carol is my niece!" Grace said, a fiercely protective urge rising within her. "Look what happened to Jim! I won't allow her to be harmed! Never!"
"Of course not!" Brother Robert said, glaring at Martin. "The girl is innocent! To harm her is to sink to the level of the evil we wish to oppose!"
"Then what," Martin cried, his expression anguished, "do we do?"
Grace could think of nothing to say. Mr. Veilleur was silent.
Brother Robert turned to Grace. "Do we accept that the Antichrist dwells within your niece?"
Grace turned away. She did not want to accept that, but it explained so much. It explained her own reaction that night a month ago when Carol and Jim visited. Carol must have been pregnant then, and Grace must have sensed the Evil One within her. And later that very night she had unconsciously turned a sacred hymn into blasphemy.
Silently she nodded. Martin, too, nodded. Mr. Veilleur sat motionless.
The monk's voice was soft. "Then we all must also agree that we cannot allow that child to be born."
"Carol is innocent!" Grace cried. "You cannot harm her!"
"I have no wish to. In fact, I forbid it. So we must find a way to strike at this unholy child without harming the woman who carries him. We need a way to cause a miscarriage, or to convince her"—he glanced heaven ward—"I never thought I would ever say this—to have an abortion."
Grace felt her blood turn to ice, and then to fire, a holy fire of renewed faith as the slowly growing spark of an earlier idea burst into an epiphany of diamond-clear light. Grace was lifted on wings of rapture as she wondered at the glory of God and His intricate ways.
"Oh, glory!" she cried.
"What's wrong?" Martin said, stepping back from her.
"The Chosen One, the one who will strike the fatal blow against the Antichrist. I know who it is."
Slowly, still feeling as if she were floating, Grace turned and walked into her bedroom.
This was the chance she had been praying for all these years. With this one deed she could undo all the sins she had committed in her youth. With this one death, the stains of all the other deaths on her soul would be cleansed.
Awed by the perfect symmetry of it all, she removed the bottom drawer from her dresser and reached into the open space below. Her questing fingertips found the dusty leather box she had placed there so many years ago. She pulled it out. It was as wide and as high as a c
igar box but twice as long.
The tools of her salvation.
Ignoring the dust that coated it, she clutched the box to her breast and gazed into the mirror, remembering.
She had started in the mid-thirties when she had been twenty or so. After a few years, all the young girls in trouble had come to call her Amazin' Grace, for she was a trained nurse who was caring and careful with them and knew how to keep them from getting infections after her work was done. Eventually she came to see the sinfulness of what she was doing, and had put it all behind her.
Now she could only wonder if her becoming Amazin' Grace had been part of God's plan all along.
"I'm the Chosen One," she said, beaming at Brother Robert, Martin, and Mr. Veilleur as she returned to the front room.
"Chosen for what?" Martin said.
Grace opened up the box to show the curettes and dilators she had used for so many abortions.
"Chosen to stop the Antichrist."
Twenty-one
Saturday, March 16
"It is too much to bear!" Brother Robert said as he strode back and forth across Martin's living room. Beyond the windows, night had fallen. The hardwood planking was cold against the soles of his bare feet but he ignored the discomfort. "It is out of the question! I cannot allow it!"
"But Brother Robert—" Martin began.
The monk cut him off. "Abortion is a sin! The Lord does not want us to sin! It is blasphemy even to consider such a thing!"
The very idea of abducting this poor young woman, whoever she was, anesthetizing her, invading her most private parts to rip out the dweller in her womb, no matter what its nature… it was completely alien to everything he had dedicated his life to, to everything within him. His body shook with revulsion at the mere thought of being party to such a violent act.
"Then why was I guided to the Chosen?"
Brother Robert stopped his pacing and stared at the third person in the room—Grace Nevins. She sat quietly on a chair in the corner with her hands folded on her lap. He had sensed a buried torment in the woman since their first meeting, and yesterday he had learned what it was. Now that torment seemed to be gone, replaced by an inner peace that shone from her eyes.
"I don't know," Brother Robert told her. "But I cannot conceive that you were brought to us to commit a sin…to involve all of us in the sin of abortion."
"But surely this is an exception," Martin said. "Abortion is the taking of a human life. That is wrong. But this is not a human life. We're talking about the Antichrist, Satan himself. A human life would not be ended by this act. The only thing ended would be Satan's threat to Christ's salvation of mankind! To destroy him is not a sin. It is doing God's work!"
The argument was persuasive, but Brother Robert found it too pat, too facile. He was missing something. There was more to this than he had ever imagined. And so confusing. Was his faith being tested? Tested again?
Faith. He had to admit that his had been sorely tested during the past few years by what he had seen and read and heard during his travels. Not that he had ever been in danger of swerving from his lifelong devotion to God, but he could not help but feel that his faith had been sullied during his travels. It had always been like a pristine, diamond-clear liquid, hermetically sealed against contamination. But the secrets he had heard whispered in the darkest, maddest corners of his travels—and culled from the most deranged ramblings in the forbidden texts he had forced himself to read to their vile conclusions—had somehow tainted that fluid, briefly clouded it with doubt. He had persevered, however, and through fasting and prayer had restored the clarity of his faith. But the doubts had remained as an inert sediment. A sediment that had been stirred up by Mr. Veilleur.
Who was that man? What did he know? The things he had said, what he had implied, they echoed what the hidden others had said: that there was no God, no salvation, no divine Providence, that humanity was but an old franc's worth of booty in an endless war between two amorphous, implacable, incomprehensible powers.
Brother Robert squared his shoulders. Mr. Veilleur was wrong, as were the madmen he had met in Africa and the Orient. Satan was the enemy here, and God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were guiding them all against him. But guiding them toward an abortion? He could not accept that.
The doorbell rang then. He threw a questioning glance at Martin.
"Are you expecting anyone?"
The younger man shook his head. His expression was annoyed.
"No. It's probably that pest, Veilleur. I'll get rid of him."
He hurried down the hall, but when he returned, he was not alone. Two of the Chosen were with him. Brother Robert recognized them as an especially devout pair—Charles Farmer and his sister, Louise.
"They've come to see you," Martin said, a troubled look on his face. "They say they're supposed to be here."
"We're answering the call," Charles said.
"Call?" Brother Robert said. "But the regular prayer meeting isn't until tomorrow afternoon."
The bell rang again. Martin answered it and returned this time with Mary Sumner.
"I'm here," she said brightly.
Brother Robert turned to Martin. "Did you call anyone?"
Martin shook his head. "No one."
Brother Robert was nonplussed. What was happening here?
The bell rang again. And again, until ten new arrivals—six men and four women—were gathered in the living room.
"Why… why are you here?" Brother Robert asked them.
"We thought we should be," said Christopher Odell, a portly man with florid cheeks.
"But why did you—do you—think that?"
He shrugged, looking slightly uncomfortable. "I don't know. I'm just speaking for myself here, but for me it was a feeling… an overwhelming feeling, almost like a summons, that I should come here right now."
Brother Robert saw the other new arrivals nod in agreement. Suddenly he was thrilled. Something was happening here. The Spirit was gathering them together—Martin, Grace, these ten especially devout members of the Chosen, and himself—in one place for a reason.
But why?
He decided to reveal to them the moral dilemma with which he and Martin and Grace had been wrestling before their arrival. Perhaps they had been called here to provide him with a solution.
But first he needed Grace's permission. He turned to the corner where she remained seated.
"Grace," he said, "may I share with our brethren what we have learned about the Antichrist, and about you, and about the remedy you have proposed?"
She nodded, then lowered her eyes to gaze at her folded hands.
Brother Robert told them then about Carol Stevens's pregnancy, that she carried the child of Dr. Hanley's soulless clone, and about what they believed to be the true nature of that child. He saw the fear and wonder in their eyes as they listened, then saw it turn to revulsion when he told them what Grace had revealed about herself.
Murmurs of "No" and "It can't be true" slipped through the room as they rejected the thought that one of their number could have had such a past.
Grace's voice suddenly cut through the babble.
"It's true!" she said. She had risen from her chair and was now moving toward the center of the room. "I told myself I was helping those girls, saving them from shame and disgrace, saving them from someone else who might butcher them or even kill them with infection. And maybe that was true to some extent. But I was also doing it for the money, and simply for the thrill of doing it!"
The ones who had been called here backed away from her, as if mere proximity might taint them. But Brother Robert saw the pain in her face as she poured out the secret she had locked up for so long.
"I didn't think of the consequences to those unborn children, those tiny souls. I simply thought of myself as a courageous problem solver. It never occurred to me how many lives I was destroying. But there came a time when my perspective changed. I became unable to dehumanize them any longer, to reduce them m
entally to mere bits of tissue by calling them embryos and fetuses. I saw them as children—and I had murdered them! I returned to the church… and I've been atoning for my sins ever since." She sobbed. "Please forgive me!"
"It's not up to us to forgive you," Juan Ortega said softly. "That's in God's hands."
"But perhaps," Grace said, "I am already in God's hands. Perhaps I am to be his weapon against the Antichrist. That is why he brought me to you. Because I have the skills to prevent his enemy from being born! I can abort the Antichrist while he is small and helpless. And I can do it without harming the innocent woman who harbors him!"
A shocked babble of voices filled the room. Cries of "No!" and "Never!" Louise Farmer turned and started down the hall toward the front door, saying, "I'm not listening to any more of this!"
As Brother Robert raised his hands to quiet them he felt the hardwood floor ripple under his feet.
And somewhere on the second story of the brownstone a door slammed with a sound like a shotgun blast.
Everyone froze in place and listened in awed silence as, one by one, every door in the brownstone slammed shut.
Brother Robert felt the floorboards ripple again. The others must have noticed it, too, for they all looked down at their feet. Suddenly the air seemed charged with electricity. He felt his face tingle, felt the hairs on his arms and legs stand up. The tension in the room was building quickly, inexorably.
Something was going to happen! Brother Robert didn't know whether to cower or to open his arms and accept it.
And then there was a light. It hovered in midair for a moment in the center of the room over Grace, a flickering tongue of flame, and then it began to expand. And brighten. There came a silent explosion of brightness, filling the room with an intolerable, staggering brilliance that spiked into Brother Robert's eyes, making him cry out with the pain.
And as suddenly as it had come, it was gone.
Brother Robert shook his head and tried to blink away the purple splotches swirling and floating before his eyes. Finally he could see again. He saw the others squinting and stumbling around the room. Some were crying, some were praying. Brother Robert too felt the urge to pray, for he had just witnessed a miracle… but what did it mean?
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