For a moment she thought she was going to be sick. Then she told herself that it was a mistake—it wasn't the same plant. Couldn't be.
But it was.
As she drew closer she saw the long stems, green and crisp less than an hour ago, now brown and drooping. The orange petals were scattered on the floor. Amid all its vigorous siblings was one dead, desiccated plant—the one she had touched.
Carol stared at it for a moment, then turned away. She wasn't going to let this spook her. Holding on to Bill's words about buying into other people's paranoia, she walked straight through the house and out the front door. She had to get away from the mansion, away from Emma, away from everyone.
She walked through the gate without looking up at the spikes and headed toward town.
9
"That's settled," Jonah said aloud as he hung up the phone. He was alone in his living room.
He had called his foreman, Bill Evers, at home and told him a story about continuing family problems since his adopted son's death and how he would have to use up some of his back vacation time for the next couple of weeks. Evers had been sympathetic and had given him the okay.
Jonah smiled. He had never realized how useful a death in the family could be.
The sky darkened suddenly. Curious, he hauled his long body out of the chair and went to the window. Ominous clouds were piling high in the west, obscuring the sun. He remembered the weather forecast on the car radio earlier. Sunny and unseasonably warm all day. But then again, a freak thunderstorm wasn't so out of place in light of the heat wave they'd been having.
Still, something about those clouds gave him a bad feeling. On impulse he called the Hanley mansion. Emma answered.
"Where's Carol?" he said.
"She's around somewhere. Did they give you the time off?"
"Yes. Can you see her?"
"Carol? No. When are you coming over?"
"Never mind that! Go find her!"
"Really, Jonah. This is a big place and—"
"Find her!"
Jonah fumed as he waited while Emma looked for Carol. Emma had her uses, but sometimes she was so thick! Finally she came back on the line, sounding out of breath.
"She's not here. I've called and called but she doesn't answer."
"Damn you, woman!" he shouted. "You were supposed to keep a watch on her!"
"I did! I made her sandwiches, but I can't watch her every minute! She's a grown—"
Jonah slammed the receiver down and returned to the window. The clouds were bigger, darker, closer, rushing this way. He knew then that this wasn't a simple out-of-season storm.
He ran to the garage and started the car. He had to find her. Even if he had to drive up and down every street in Monroe, he'd find her and get her to safety.
That storm was aimed at her, and at what she carried.
Twenty-three
1
As she walked along the harborfront, Carol heard the refrain from Otis Redding's "Dock of the Bay" through the open window of a passing car. She remembered how taken Jim had been with the song when he'd first heard it a couple of weeks ago. Now Jim was dead, just like Otis.
She tried to shake off the morbid associations, but everyplace she went reminded her in some way of Jim. And God, how she needed him now.
The heat and humidity were becoming oppressive. What breeze there was off the harbor was like a big dog panting in her face. She heard a faint rumble of thunder and looked up to see a towering mass of clouds sliding across the sky, smothering the sun. Those thunderheads seemed to be in an awful hurry. Flickers of lightning flashed against their dark underbellies. Before she knew it, the bright afternoon was gone, replaced by the still, heavy gloom that precedes a storm.
Just what I need, she thought.
Carol hated thunderstorms. But Jim had always loved them. She would cringe against him with her hands over her ears and her eyes squeezed tightly shut while he stared out a window in rapt fascination at the lightning. The more ferocious the storm, the better for Jim.
But there would be no one to huddle with in this storm, and it looked like it was going to be a whopper. She began to hurry back toward Shore Drive.
Suddenly the storm leapt upon the town. A cold wind beat against the still warm air and drove it off. The lightning narrowed from pale sheets into lancing bolts of crackling blue-white fury, the thunder rose from muttered rumbles to the sound of savage giants wielding monstrous sledgehammers against the tin dome of the sky. Then the rain came. Huge wind-driven drops, scattered at first, left silver-dollar-size splotches on the streets and sidewalks, followed by sheets of icy water that beat the swirling dust into mud and carried it away in eddying rivulets that in no time were running two inches deep along the curbs.
Carol was soaked in an instant. She ran under a tree but remembered how that was supposed to be the worst place to wait out a thunderstorm. Up ahead, half a block away, she saw her old parish church—Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow. It had to be safer than this tree.
As she dashed for the front door, hail began to pound out of the sky, icy white pellets, mostly marble-size but some as big as golf balls, bouncing off the pavement, pelting her head and shoulders, making a terrific racket on the cars parked along the curb. She ran up the stone steps, praying the front door was unlocked. It yielded to her tug and allowed her into the cool, dry silence of the vestibule.
Abruptly the storm seemed far away.
Church. When was the last time she had been in church? Somebody's wedding? A christening? She couldn't remember. She hadn't been much of a churchgoer since her teens. Looking back, she thought she could blame her falling away on a reaction to her parents' deaths. Her careless attitude toward church had caused some friction with Aunt Grace during her college years, but no big scenes. She never became antireligious like Jim; it was just that after a while there simply didn't seem much point in all that kneeling and praying every Sunday to a God who with each passing year seemed increasingly remote and indifferent. But she remembered times between her parents' death and her falling away when coming to Our Lady alone and just sitting here in the quiet had given her a form of solace.
She looked around the vestibule. To her left was the baptismal font and, to the right, the stairway to the choir loft. During seventh and eighth grades she had sung in the choir every Sunday at the nine a.m. children's Mass.
She shivered. Her hair and bare shoulders still dripped with rain and her wet sundress clung to her like an ill-fitting second skin.
She opened the door and stepped into the nave. As she walked up the center aisle, the rapid-fire lightning flashes from the storm illuminated the stained-glass windows, strobing bright patterns of colored light across the pews and the altar, almost like one of those psychedelic light shows that were so popular with the acid heads.
Thunder shook the building again and again as she walked about two thirds of the way to the altar and slipped into a pew. She knelt and buried her face in her hands to shut out the lightning. Questions kept echoing through her mind: How was she going to do this alone? How was she going to raise this baby without Jim?
You are not!
Her head snapped up. The words startled her. Who… ?
She hadn't really heard them. They hadn't been spoken. They had sounded in her mind. Yet she glanced around the church anyway. She was alone. The only other human figures present were the life-size statues of the Virgin Mary standing in the alcove by the pulpit to the left of the altar, her foot crushing the serpent of Satan; over on the right, the crucified Christ.
For a heart-stopping instant, out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw Christ's thorn-crowned head move, but when she looked again, straight on, it seemed unchanged. Just a trick of the flashing light from the storm.
Suddenly she felt a change in the empty church. The atmosphere had been open and accepting when she had entered; now she sensed an air of burgeoning unwelcomeness, of outright hostility.
And she felt hot. The chill f
rom her rain-soaked sundress was gone, replaced by a growing sensation of heat. Her skin felt scorched, scalded.
A sound like cracking wood startled her. She looked around, but because of the way sound echoed through the wide-open nave and across the vaulted ceiling, it seemed to come from all sides. Then the pew shifted under her. Frightened, she stumbled out into the aisle. The cracking sounds began to boom around her, louder than ever. The creaks, the groans, the screams of tortured wood filled the air. She watched the pews begin to shift, to twist, to warp and writhe as if in agony.
Suddenly the pew she had just vacated buckled and split lengthwise along the seat with a sound like a cannon shot. All around her the other pews began to crack in a deafening fusillade. Fighting the trapped, panicky feeling, she clapped her hands over her ears against the roar and staggered in a slow circle. In the flickering, kaleidoscopic light, splinters flew into the air as the pews cracked and pulled loose from the marble floor.
And she was hot! So hot! A mist rose before her eyes. She looked at her arms and saw tendrils of smoke curling, twisting, rising from her wet skin. Her whole body was steaming!
The flickering light, the rumble of the thunder, the screams of the tortured wood—it all seemed centered on her. She had to get out of here!
As she turned to run, she saw the head of the crucified Christ moving. Her knees went soft as she realized that this wasn't a trick of the light.
The statue had raised its head and was looking at her.
2
Curse this rain!
Jonah felt the balding tires slip on the old downtown trolley tracks as he guided his car toward the curb. He couldn't see where he was going. His wipers couldn't keep up with the downpour, and his huffing defogger labored in vain against the mist that blurred the sweating inner surface of his windshield.
He wiped a sleeve across the side window to clear it but that was no help. It was as if he'd driven into a gray, wet limbo. Outside, Monroe's shopping district was completely obscured by the mad torrent of water dropping from the sky. As rain and hail beat a manic tattoo on the roof, Jonah felt the first stirrings of fear. Something was happening. Somewhere nearby, the other side was doing something to her. Everything would be ruined if he didn't find her!
Where is she?
In desperation he pressed the heel of his palm over his good right eye, sealing out the light. He lifted the patch over his left.
Darkness. Some drifting afterimages on the right, but on the left only a formless void.
Well, what did he expect? The visions only came when they damn well pleased. And apparently whatever power he had was keeping to itself today. Today, of all days, when he needed it most! He swiveled his head left and right like a radar dish, hoping something would come, but—
Jonah froze. There, to the right. Uphill, away from the waterfront. He pulled off his right hand and saw only the fogged interior of the car. But when he covered it again…
A light.
Not a flashing beacon, not a bright spotlight. Just a pale glow in the sightless black. Jonah felt a burst of hope. It had to mean something! He put the car in gear and began to crawl through the deluge. At the first intersection he turned right and revved the engine uphill against the current. Every so often he would stop and cover his good eye. The glow was growing brighter as he moved. It was now ahead and to the left. He slowly continued to make his way up the slope, turning the car left and then right again, until the glow filled the void in his dead eye.
This is it!
He determined the position of the glow's center, flipped his patch down, and leapt from the car. Through the pelting rain he made out the looming stone-and-stucco front of the Catholic church.
Jonah froze at the curb. This couldn't be! The Church wasn't involved! It had no power—least of all over the One! What was happening here?
But the girl was inside, and with her, the One. And the One was in danger!
As Jonah started toward the church, the wind and hail doubled in fury, as if to keep him away. But he had to get inside. Something terrible was about to happen in there!
3
Christ stared—no, glared—at her from his cross. His eyes glowed with anger.
Carol's heart thudded against her chest wall. Her whole body trembled.
"This isn't happening!" she said aloud into the cacophony of rending wood, hoping the sound of her own voice would reassure her. It didn't. "This is another one of those dreams! It has to be! None of this is real!"
Movement drew her eyes to Christ's right hand. The fingers were flexing, the palm rocking on the spindle of the nail that pierced it. She saw the forearm muscles bulge with effort. But this was a wooden statue! Wooden muscles didn't bulge!
That proves this is a nightmare! Any minute I'll wake up!
For a moment she was transported to a more peaceful place by the thought of waking up next to Jim and finding that all the horrors of the past week had been just part of an awful dream. Wouldn't that be wonderful?
Blood began dripping from Christ's hand as he worked the nail free. It oozed down his palm in a rivulet and fell to the floor in long, slow, heavy drops.
Carol turned to run down the aisle when she noticed the statue of the Blessed Virgin looking at her. Tears streamed from her eyes. A voice sounded in Carol's head: Would you undo all He suffered for?
This was madness! A fever dream! Someone must have slipped some LSD into her water carafe at the hospital!
Then she noticed movement at the blessed Mother's feet. The snake was moving, slithering free from beneath her crushing foot.
Would you set the Serpent free?
The snake slid off the pedestal and was out of sight for a moment. Then its thick, brown length appeared again at the chancel rail, coiling up a baluster and then pausing at the top to stare at her with its glittering eyes.
Carol wanted to run but couldn't. The horrid fascination of it had rooted her to the spot. And now the pains began low in her pelvis, just like they had on Friday.
The piercing screech of a nail being ripped from dry wood drew her attention to her right again. Christ's right hand was free of the cross. With the bloody nail still protruding from his palm, he leveled his arm and pointed a finger directly at her eyes.
Would you release the Serpent? Pluck it out! Pluck it OUT!
"It's my baby! Jim's and mine!"
Another wave of pain caught her, doubling her over. And as she looked down she saw the snake coiled around her feet. With an undulating motion it wound itself around her leg and began to climb.
Carol screamed with terror and with the increasing pain ripping through her lower belly. It was happening again! Oh, God, she was going to miscarry! And this time no one was here to help her!
Suddenly a hand gripped her arm and another one pulled the snake off her leg and hurled it toward the altar. She turned and saw Jonah standing close beside her. She gasped at the sight of him. He seemed to be on fire—smoke streamed from his skin and clothes. He appeared to be suffering agonies of his own.
"Got to get you out of here!" he shouted hoarsely.
Carol had never dreamed she'd be glad to see that cold, hard, one-eyed face, but now she fell against him and clung to him, sobbing.
"Oh, Jonah! Help me! So weak! I think I'm going to faint."
He stooped, got one arm behind her knees, the other around her back, and then he was carrying her toward the vestibule.
Safe! She was going to be safe!
Just then the ceiling exploded downward in a blaze of crackling blue-white incandescence. Jonah paused a moment, then dashed for the doors. She looked over his shoulder and saw the iron cross from the church roof hurtling through the opening in the ceiling, driving downward amid the water and debris to smash into the very spot where she had been standing. It quivered there, spiked into the marble floor on a tilt, glowing and burning with green fire.
And then they were through the vestibule and out the front doors into the rain. The cool water felt g
ood on her burning skin as Jonah carried her down the steps to his car. He helped her into the backseat.
"Lie down," he said. "Didn't the doctor tell you to stay off your feet?"
The barely repressed fury in his face frightened Carol. Besides, he was right. So she laid back and got her feet up as Jonah slid behind the wheel and began to drive.
4
"The phone line's cut," Martin said, brandishing the wire cutters in his bandaged hand as he sat dripping and shivering beside him in the front seat of the car.
Brother Robert noted the excitement in his eyes and the feverish glow on his cheeks. His rain-plastered hair only added to the effect, giving him a deranged look. He seemed to think he was playing James Bond.
"Good," he said absently.
Martin rolled down the window and looked at the sky. "The rain's letting up," he said.
Brother Robert looked at Grace and saw how pale and tense she was. "What do you think, Grace?"
"I think it's time we began," she said.
Brother Robert nodded. There didn't seem to be a reason to put it off any longer.
"Go ahead," he told Martin. "But be careful."
"Watch out for Jonah Stevens," Grace said. "He's big and strong. He's the only one who'll give you trouble."
Martin nodded and got out of the car. He signaled to the other two vehicles, and soon he was surrounded by the other half dozen men from the Chosen. Brother Robert felt a shade unmanly for not going with the men, but he could not risk tainting his vows or his order with even a hint of violence. He would take the women and the cars farther down the road and wait until the men had secured the house, breaking in if necessary, subduing anyone inside who resisted them. They would signal Brother Robert when everything was settled. Two of the men carried axes, and another carried a coil of nylon clothesline. They seemed prepared for everything.
Is this right? he asked himself for the hundredth time since this morning. And each time he had asked, he looked at his punctured hands, as he did now, and the answer was always the same: How could one argue with the Stigmata?
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